Skylanders: The Dragon Chronicles: The First Portal
by Technow
Summary: Technology is being developed on Earth that may have a great effect on Skylands. Part 1 of the Dragon Chronicles. Minor cross-over with other video games, but not large enough to make it a cross-over. Read and find out!
1. Just Pull the Switch!

Ch. 1: Just Pull the Switch!

Taylor Aiadon, or as he had recently decided he wished to be called, Tails, was carefully tweezing one of a multitude of wires into position on an incredibly complex circuit-board. Or so it appeared. Fact of the matter was, he had installed far more pieces of circuitry and other scientific junk than really necessary to make it look even more amazing when he presented it to the world.

Tails was a scientist on Earth who had recently been struck with a great plan for a greater idea - the creation of a perfect virtual reality environment. The entire design was far less complicated than most scientists in the world believed it would have to be, which was why Tails was the first to ever attempt such a thing, even though most of the technology required had existed for decades.

Why was he thinking so radically?

Tails was thirteen and a half years old.

Typing in a command on his laptop, which he was using to view the environment he was creating without actually having to go inside it, a screen opened. A small beach, with a rock cliff face behind it and what appeared to be a large gear set into the wall, came up. Panning across, he viewed a large, open gate that led to some stone docks. Two old-fashioned wooden ships were moored at the docks.

(This is, of course, the docks and beach area in the Castle of Light, which is what the Ruins were called now that they were no longer ruins)

The lighting was poor, as Tails had set day and night inside the environment and it was currently night, but the view was clear enough.

The environment he was creating was based off the three Skylanders games, which were the best games he had ever played and the technology employed in them was fascinating. He had literally built a program that scanned the three disks and used all of the information contained on each and every one of them to create a complete virtual Skylands.

Tails flipped an important-looking switch, and a whole host of machinery activated. A wrap popped up in front of him. "Oh, good," He took a bite out of the wrap, then went back to working on the virtuality portal.

He realised that his equipment could not yet transfer molecules from reality to virtuality, so he had devised an ingenious mechanism that, ironically, used the figures themselves for the virtuality. It was a design where you placed a Skylander on the Portal of Power, like in the game, then went into the virtuality in the form of that Skylander. If it worked.

Flipping another switch, a large, powerful fan activated. Tails was blown back towards the door to the small attic space he had hidden it in. "I gotta change that design," He activated a set of magnets on his shoes, and steadily made his way back to the technology. The fan was necessary to keep the equipment cool, but it was a real pain in the butt sometimes.

Tails carefully tweezed the last wire that was actually part of the machine into position, ran a quick check of everything necessary, then went back into his actual room and looked over his collection of Skylanders figures, considering which one to use first for the virtuality.

After a few minutes of deliberation, his gaze settled on S2 Spyro. He shrugged, and thought out loud, "Hey, he's already this famous face of an entire video game industry, why not use him first?" He picked S2 over Mega Ram because he figured, correctly, that the ram horns would be cumbersome to lug around.

Tails picked up the figurine and crawled back through to the attic space. There he realised he had forgotten where he put the Portal. Eventually locating it and dragging it over to the holographic virtuality portal, he placed the figurine on the Portal and reached for the switch that would turn it on. Then he paused.

"I have spent months building this, uncountable amounts of time making it perfect. And now it is time to finally activate it. And I'm making a speech to nobody at all. I thought only mad scientists did that,"

Tails took a deep breath, pulled the switch, and waited. Nothing happened. He rolled his eyes and kicked the machine. One by one, the lightbulbs around the rim of the portal lit up. For a bit of fun, there were sixteen bulbs, two coloured for each Skylander element. After a couple of minutes, all sixteen were lit up and a swirling vortex of energy appeared inside the frame. A hologram of Spyro, wearing the Trucker Hat (with Spyro's face on it) Tails had put on his Spyro, came up over the portal.

Tails took a deep breath, and stepped in.

**I know what everyone's thinking is going to happen, and that's not it.**

**Numbah 94, I enjoyed your trilogy, I hope you enjoy mine. Please note this is nowhere near as done as Rise of the Dragon King is. **

**I am working from an IPad, so please excuse me if there are some glitches or something. It's the first time I've tried this, so please review. I have the basic outline for the entire first part of the trilogy planned, but if anyone has any ideas I will be glad to hear them.**

**Update: The glitches have been fixed, you can read through now.**


	2. This is too Real to be Real

Ch. 2: This is too Real to be Real  
A sensation of uncontrollably soaring through an infinite space of intricate colours and lights came over Tails. Then came a feeling of suddenly leaving his body behind and his consciousness suddenly entering a perfect replica of the Spyro that had come up as a hologram, except solid. At which point he went back to soaring through the glowing emptiness, in Spyro's form.  
Tails carefully examined his new form, admiring the way the light glistened off his purple scales and working out how to move his new tail and wings.  
Which he only had a couple of minutes to do before a singularity of unbelievably bright light showed up and enveloped him.

"Dang, what happened?" Tails woke up on a beach, looking up at a bright blue sky. He recognised a giant cog set in a nearby cliff face, and, when checking his body, he was still in Spyro's form, so he could only assume he had arrived in the virtuality safely. And oddly enough, his voice sounded just like Spyro's had in the game.  
He then spent a few minutes working out how to walk as a quadruped.  
Once he had done that, he decided working out how to get back to his reality was of paramount importance, and when he didn't see any obvious method of doing so, he began scratching out calculations in the sand.  
"Spyro? I thought you were on vacation?" An unseen person called out from behind Tails. Tails quickly looked over his shoulder to see what appeared to be Zap doing his best to splash Slam Bam and Chill, which really failed because they froze the water as soon as it came at them.  
"Not the time, I'm theorising on molecular cross-reality physics here and I - wait, what the heck!"  
Tails jumped towards Zap, flooring him on the seabed a foot or so beneath the surface. "Who are you and how the heck did you get into my virtuality?"  
Zap looked bewildered. "It's me, Zap, remember? You recruited me to the Skylanders a year ago! Remember?"  
Tails rolled his eyes. "Please, I'm no more the real Spyro than you are the real Zap. Don't tell me, there's a time passage difference between reality and here and it's been several years back on Earth, enough time for the government to confiscate the virtuality portal and send you, in the form of Zap, to apprehend me. And those two are your back-up," At the last sentence, Tails indicated Slam Bam and Chill.  
"Can I get some help here, Spyro's gone nuts!" Zap yelled to the other two Water Skylanders. Working together, they encased all of Tails' body below the neck in ice. Slam Bam lifted him off Zap, and the three carried him up to the castle, answering queries from other Skylanders they met along the way about what they were doing.  
Tails was dropped in a prisoner cell in the Tower of Power's (the residence of Portal Masters and home to the Portal of Power) basement, where the 'Skylander information extraction team' assembled. Basically, it was Camo and his giant meat-eating plants, Zap, Stealth Elf and Hex. "We've radioed the real Spyro and we know he's still on vacation, but he's coming back to see this, so you can drop any pretence that you're the real Spyro," Hex told the imprisoned dragon.  
"Seriously? That's what you're going with to start the interrogation? Didn't that guy in the form of Zap tell you that I wasn't even trying to pretend I was Spyro?"  
"Who are you?" Stealth Elf spoke this time.  
"Call me Tails. And what's your real name?" The ninja frowned.  
"Stealth Elf,"  
"Okay, so I never even tried to pretend I was Spyro, but you're telling me you're Stealth Elf. Fine, I'll humour your twisted ideas for now. Is anyone here going to tell me their real names?"  
The Skylanders all introduced themselves.  
"Dang, you're thicker than I thought,"  
Then came the sound of an airship docking, and a far-off "BOOM!" A minute later, the real Spyro swept in. And drew up short at the sight that presented itself to him. Then he leaned forward for a closer look. "You're right, the resemblance is uncanny," he commented to Zap.  
"And where did you get that hat?" Spyro added.  
"Well? How are you going to play this? Were they meant to be the bad cop then you show up as the good cop? Oh, and the hat was in a hidden chamber in a Tech zone in Molekin Mountain. Another one might still be there,"  
"Who are you working for? The Cyclopses? The Trolls?" Spyro asked.  
"Please don't say Kaos," Zap added, a panicked look on his face.  
"Stop playing dumb, all five of you. We all know that none of this is real, these are not our real bodies, and this is just a virtual reality I created!" Tails told them, starting to get angry.  
"Didn't Drobot mention something about 'virtual reality' a while ago?" Stealth Elf asked, frowning behind her mask.  
"Yeah. He did, didn't he? Go find him and bring him here. Maybe he can make sense of this guy," Spyro decided.  
Stealth Elf sprinted away.

**Okay, I actually already had this on my drive, but decided to wait a day or so in hopes of reviews. Only one came up. Thank you Seraph. So I'm just going to upload as much as I can without spoiling the big cliffhanger at the end of Chapter 5. That's why there are no Author's notes at the end of Chapters 3 and 4.**


	3. You are an Incredibly Stupid Genius!

Ch. 3: You are an Incredibly Stupid Genius

Stealth Elf quickly returned, a dragon wearing an incredibly complex mechanical suit following her.

"Stealth Elf says you mentioned something about virtual reality. What do you mean?" Drobot, for it was obviously he, asked Tails in his mechanical, booming voice.

"Turn off the annoying voice modifier, and I'll tell you," Tails told the other dragon scathingly. The other Skylanders nodded behind Drobot's back. "Annoying, yes," "He isn't wrong," Camo and Zap muttered, before Drobot whacked them with his tail. He tapped a button on his helmet with his claw. "Well?"

"I come from another world, known as Earth. It is -"

"Spare us the lecture, imposter-boy, we all know what Earth is. Our Portal Masters, Scott and Loni, come from there and told us all about it," Hex growled, cutting Tails off.

"Good, that will save a lot of time. Anyway, I was an inventor on Earth, who - wait, someone else here came here from Earth? No no no, there was an Earth in the game, I should have realised there might be Portal Masters from a virtuality Earth in the Skylands virtuality. So I invented a virtual reality creation device, which used the existing programming of the three Skylanders games: Spyro's Adventure, Giants, and Swap Force, to create a realistic virtuality of the three games, and to make it as big and impressive as possible, I also programmed in every image, every clip and every figurine that I could get my hands on. And I finally decided it was time to test it. So here I am, in the virtual reality,"

"And you look exactly like me why?" Spyro asked his duplicate.

"I knew my technology wasn't up to transferring real matter into a computer-generated world, so I designed a way to use the existing characters in the Skylanders video game as sort of avatars that the players, namely me, could be embodied within. I figured as Spyro was already the face of an entire video game industry, plus he was one of the three most well known characters in existence, it would be nice and symbolic to try him first,"

Camo thought about this for a minute. "So you're saying you could have taken the form of any one of us, and you just picked Spyro because of his past adventures in the Dragon Realms?"

"Exactl-wait, I never mentioned they were in the Dragon Realms. How did you know that?"

"You have got to show me how this works, man. Imagine the pranks!"

"Spyro told all the Skylanders about them, mainly to stop everyone disliking Cynder for her past. It didn't work," Hex cut Camo and his ramblings about impersonation pranks off.

"Wait. They happened in this reality?"

Spyro rolled his eyes. "Of course," all six Skylanders chorused at more or less the same time.

"But I never could get my hands on the original Spyro games, they were too old, so I never programmed them into the virtuality. So they never should have happened, but they did happen. But the Skylanders games never mentioned Spyro's exploits. Meaning that either the virtuality is self-evolving, which is highly unlikely, or I was wrong all this time and this is a real Skylands with real Skylanders, meaning I managed to open a portal to another dimension, meaning I am even more of a genius than I thought, meaning - well, first off it means I owe everyone here a deep apology,"

Stealth Elf decided it was time for her to interject. "So everything you said and did since appearing on the beach and flooring Zap was all a misunderstanding - and you're apologising for it?"

Tails thought for a second, then replied "Exactly,"

"Should we let him out of the cell, then?" Camo suggested. Hex unlocked the door, and Tails gratefully stretched his wings.

"Thank you," The party stepped out into the sunlight.

"Wait, you said 'first off'. Would that imply there's a 'second off'?" Zap asked. "Yep. It means I have no idea how to get home, or how to get out of my Spyro avatar. It's annoying, I was wearing my favourite overcoat. In the meantime - have you got any tips on flying? Because I was really looking forward to that,"

**Yes, I got the title from episode 17 of Total Drama World Tour. No other comment.**


	4. Rejection

Ch. 4: Rejection

"Dang, what is their problem? One misconception, and everyone here thinks I'm a loon," Tails muttered angrily. At this point, all ninety-ish Skylanders had heard what was going on with Tails, and even though they tried to hide their thoughts, it was obvious what was going on. They were angry he was wearing the form of Spyro, and thought he was crazy because of the way he acted when he arrived.

"Tell me about it," a new voice, female, came from behind him. "Really? You got dragged through the castle saying stuff that from their perspective a madman would say? You got stuck in a form that you have no idea how to control and everyone resents you for having?"

"No, I just got hijacked by an evil Undead dragon and forced to almost destroy the Dragon Realms. Technically, I'm a Skylander, but beyond that, I'm the only one in ninety who no one wants anything to do with,"

"Based on that heartwarming recount of your recent life, I'm guessing you're Cynder. As so far you're the only person here who's actually tried to be nice to me, it's nice to meet you," Tails finally turned his head to se a purple-and-pink dragoness behind him. "You're not at all repulsed by my history?" Cynder asked, frowning. "Uh, no,"

"Most people want nothing to do with me when they hear what I've done," Cynder told the other dragon in a depressed tone. "Hey, I make my own decisions about people. And if you're wondering about the hat, it's stuck. I probably should have removed it while I was loading the avatar," Cynder spotted Spyro's face on the hat. "Well, it's the sort of thing he'd like. Typical Spyro," Tails frowned, raised an eyebrow, then remembered that as Spyro he didn't have eyebrows, and lowered it again.

"Don't you like Spyro?"

"He's the only other person here who gave me a chance, so yes, I do. He's just kind of vain. He's probably trying to track down one of those hats for himself as we speak,"

"He'll no doubt be in Molekin Mountain with a Tech Skylander then. I told him it was in a Tech zone over there,"

"You lied?" Cynder asked, a sly grin creeping over her face. Tails' expression mirrored hers. "Nope, I just forgot to mention that there were about three Tech zones in Molekin Mountain - and how well the hat in question is hidden. Does night normally fall this fast in Skylands?"

Cynder, who had been chuckling at Tails' description of everything he had forgotten to tell Spyro about where to find that hat, replied "Huh? No, it's two in the afternoon. Why?"

By way of answering, Tails gestured at the rapidly darkening sky with his wing.

"Okay, clearly evil's attacking. How many of Kaos' attacks have happened yet?"

"The most recent one was when he tried to use the Iron Fist of Arkus to take control of the dormant Arkeyan Empire and use that to take over Skylands. That was last year," Cynder told him. "What about the time when he used Petrified Darkness to 'evilise' everything in sight?" Tails asked.

"He what?" Cynder gasped.

"They were the events of the third Skylanders game back on Earth. Kaos became reunited with his mother, who taught him about Petrified Darkness and how to use it to evilise, basically anything. Those Evilisers were the only reason Greebles were actually a threat to you Skylanders. And they turned all kinds of beings evil. Greebles, Sugarbats, Arctic Snowrollers,"

Tails was shocked out of his memory by Cynder tapping him on the shoulder with one of the barbs on her wings. "Ouch," He looked over at Cynder, who was pointing one claw at the sky.

A giant, bigger than an Arkeyan robot, airship had dropped out of the dark, ominous clouds that now covered the sky. Which was basically a massive gun suspended underneath a typical airship balloon, with a cockpit.

Watching from the Dragon's Peak horn, where the two dragons had absent-mindedly wandered as they discussed various topics, several Skylanders had assembled near the Core of Light. Tails and Cynder watched from the hillock, and took advantage of their enhanced dragon senses to see and hear everything.

Wash Buckler pulled out a telescope. "Is that Kaos?" Terrafin, who was standing next to him, grabbed the telescope from his hand and held it to his eye. "Forget Kaos - is that his mum?" Jet-Vac soared into the sky to get a closer look. "It's both - and Glumshanks!" he called down to the assembled Skylanders.

Tails nudged Cynder. "That ship's a giant Eviliser! It's probably powerful enough to turn this whole island - and everything on it - pure evil!" Cynder gasped. "You mean -" But Tails was nodding grimly.

"Yep. The Core of Light. C'mon," And Tails took off towards the Dread-Yacht. Cynder, panicking, quickly caught up with him. "What are you doing?"

"Deactivating that laser. If the Core of Light, or all the Skylanders, are turned evil by that thing, Skylands is doomed,"

Then they ran into something invisible, but rock solid. "Force field. Oh, crud," Then, they were being hurled back to the Skyland before they knew it.

Spyro leapt to the front, quickly followed by another dragon and an elf Tails didn't recognise. "Who are they?" he asked the dragoness crouching next to him. "The elf's Scott, and the dragon's Loni. They're our Portal Masters. They used to be human, but for some reason humans cannot exist in Skylands, so they were forced to become a different species. Kind of like you. I think it's something to do with Skylands being full of magic, and humans being like, anti-magic. I wouldn't be the one to ask, Hot Dog and Moltey were doing their best to bury me at the time," Cynder explained. "And they couldn't be bothered coming to meet me?" Tails growled, clenching his teeth.

"What do you want, Kaos?" Spyro shouted through a megaphone Flynn had leant him. Apparently Flynn used to shout out 'BOOM!' through that megaphone. He stopped using it when he shouted out 'BOOM!' over a field full of Chompies with it.

Spyro could still see some teeth-marks on the metal.

"To give you a warning. You have exactly five minutes to leave this place before I evilise it and everything on it. Starting . . . . NOW!"


	5. Escapes and Escapades

Ch. 5: Escapes and Escapades

Four minutes had passed. No one, shockingly not even Flynn, had budged. Tails and Cynder had been animatedly discussing what to do.

"We need to get to the Dread-Yacht!"

"We need to help the other Skylanders!"

"They're going to be evilised, but if I remember from the game, dealing enough damage to something that has been evilised causes them to be reverted. The Dread-Yacht's the only thing around here that can deal that kind of damage quickly enough,"

"So you're basing our plan for saving the universe on a video game?"

"Well, if you have a better idea, I'd like to hear it," There was a couple of seconds, then Cynder decided "Touché. Let's go,"

Cynder had been rejected a lot in the six or seven years since Spyro had freed her from Malefor's evil clutches. It had been nice to work with him to defeat her former master, but ever since she had struck out on her own, life had been one failure after another. Nobody wanted anything to do with her due to her history, and the following two years had been the worst of her life. Meaning she knew very well when to back down.

Then, that fateful day four years ago, when Master Eon and Spyro had contacted her and offered her the position of a Skylander. Cynder had gratefully accepted, thinking that the good she could do as a Skylander would finally eclipse the evil of her past, but she had just been more alone than ever.

It was really impossible to be surprised how bitter such a history could make a dragon.

She had thought Whirlwind and Polarus might understand and even befriend her, because they had been rejected for something they couldn't help too, but they too couldn't get past her history.

Then Tails had come and been rejected, same as she had. They had become instant friends, from what she could see. Sure, they had only known each other a couple of hours, but other than Spyro, Tails was treating her in the best way anyone had in her life. And what with being leader of the Skylanders and all, Spyro barely had any time for her anymore. So, unless something terrible happened between them, Tails could well be the best friend she had ever had.

They jumped over the cliff to the docks, conveniently landing right on the Dread-Yacht's deck. Where Flynn was hurriedly trying to get the ship to start.

"Flynn? Aren't you up making a stand with the other Skylanders?" Cynder asked, getting annoyed. "That's a cardboard stand-in I had made for occasions like this. I'm getting out of this lightforsaken place,"

"But we need the Dread-Yacht to save the universe! And where the heck do you get stand-ins like that?"

"It's my ship!"

Tails snuck up behind him and, using Spyro's fire breath for the first time, set fire to his pants. Flynn shrieked and jumped over the side of the ship.

Tails soared up to the cockpit with a couple of strong wing-beats-"Now you're just showing off," Cynder interjected.

"I've been a dragon for literally two hours. Let me enjoy flight, okay? Now are you going to stand around bickering, or get down to the gun on the lower deck?"

Cynder looked shocked. "Sorry, I get touchy under stress. Now let's get moving," Tails added.

Cynder opened the hatch that led to the gun deck and jumped through. Tails looked over the pilot controls, quickly working out where everything important was. A grin came over his dragonoid muzzle.

He grasped the intercom in one paw, the whistle in the other, pulled the whistle and called "All aboard!" into the intercom.

"Why did you say that?" Cynder shouted into the intercom.

"It's an old Earth joke. Always wanted to do that. Really should have been a train, but who cares?" Tails twisted the key, which Flynn had conveniently left in the ignition, and the old engines spluttered to life. Somehow, none of the Skylanders, or Kaos and co. even noticed, they were so engrossed in the entire 'Kaos threatening Skylands again' scene.

The Dread-Yacht bucked and twisted, but Tails finally got it under control. He flew it to what should be a sufficient distance from the island to escape the blast radius, then called over the radio "Are you ready with the turret, Cynder?"

"We're clear. Waiting for your command," Cynder replied.

"As soon as that thing fires, you can be as trigger happy as, well, Trigger Happy," Tails shrugged. Suddenly a sound of snoring came up on the intercom. "Who's that?" Cynder wondered.

"Well, it's not me. There must be someone else on the ship. Not important right now, the eviliser's due to fire in five seconds,"

Right on schedule, the giant cannon fired. Most of the Skylanders braced themselves, expecting something similar to the time Kaos had trapped them as toys and banished them to Earth. Joke had been on him then, Spyro reflected, as they had just returned - with reinforcements, in the form of Scott and Loni. Then the laser enveloped the island, and, as Tails had expected, evilised it and everything on it.

What Spyro and everyone else on the island did not expect was the sensation of reformation, as their bodies and minds were inverted into darkness.

What Cynder did not expect was Sunburn sleepily staggering on deck. She Shadow Dashed both of them up to Tails in the cockpit, who was watching something both horrifying and strangely compelling at the same time.

What Tails did not expect was the expanding shockwave of evilising energy powering in every direction - including towards the Dread-Yacht. Registering Cynder and Sunburn's appearance next to him, he paid no heed as Cynder grasped his paw, preparing for a Shadow Dash.

But then the evil energy was upon them.

**Dun Dun Dun!**

**Numbah 94, I hope you don't mind that I borrowed your idea of the variant Skylanders being relatives of the original ones. 'Cause that's how I'm writing this.**

**I hope everyone enjoys the cliffhanger here that I mentioned in Chapter 2. Don't worry too much, they survive, but that's all I'm telling you until the next chapter is uploaded. Tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on how good the wifi is with me.**


	6. Why are we Alive?

Ch. 6: Why are we Alive?

Tails bashed his head on a roof girder as he tried to sit up. Looking around, and at himself, he was back in his dingy attic laboratory - and he was human again. "Aww, I really enjoyed being Spyro,"

He checked his watch - and stared. According to it, only two minutes had passed. But he had surely been in Skylands for two hours! "Maybe it was all some kind of dream?"

"What was all some kind of dream?" A groggy Cynder asked, from where she lay against the wall. "Cynder? Are you alright?"

"Do I look like I'm alright?" the Undead dragoness snapped.

In fairness, she was lying sprawled across the slanting roof, held in place by her horns, the spurs on her wings and the sharpened point on her tail - up-side-down. Her head and neck were terribly constricted against the floor. "Who are you?"

"It's me, Tails. This is how I look when I'm not in a Spyro avatar," Tails explained as he rushed over to get her down. "Wasn't Sunburn with us, somehow?"

"Down here,"

Tails and Cynder rushed over to a charred hole in the roof. Sunburn was standing on top of a massive fridge. "Yeah, my lab is right above the pantry," Tails offered by way of explanation.

The two managed to pull Sunburn back into the lab. "Anyone else here?" Tails called. After about a minute of silence, Cynder answered. "Nope,"

"Where are we?" Sunburn asked.

"My lab back on Earth," Tails answered. "Somehow being hit with that energy sent me back to Earth, and since I was in physical contact with the two of you, you got pulled back here with me,"

"I wish there was a way we could see what was going on in Skylands," Cynder muttered, shaking her head.

A grin came over Tails' face. "Maybe there is," He dashed over to his laptop and started typing in commands. Soon enough, a video box came up on-screen. "What's that?" Sunburn queried.

"A video feed to the Island of Light, you idiot," Tails told him.

It looked different, to say the least. The sand and rock had turned a shade of dark pink similar to Cynder's underbelly, but pinker. The water was black, but when Tails panned over to the docks, both ships were gone. As he panned around the island, things had transformed in various similar ways. The grass and tree leaves had turned purple, the tree wood was black, all of the castle stone was black and the roofs were varying shades of pink and purple. It was the same everywhere he looked.

Cynder suddenly grabbed the mouse and panned over to the Core of Light. Or where the Core of Light had been.

There was nothing but a gaping hole in the ground where it had been. And two of the Skylanders were picking around it.

Or at least what had been two of the Skylanders.

Black-and-pink-coloured versions of Stealth Elf and Drobot were picking around the area, trying to find anything. "Is that . . ." Cynder trailed off in astonishment at the sight as Tails nodded grimly. "Stealth Elf and Drobot. Evilised,"

Meanwhile Sunburn had wandered through into Tails' bedroom. "Whoa," And he was dumbstruck at the amount of Skylander figures all over the place. "Cynder, you should see this," Cynder, hearing the hybrid, dashed through to see him. "Uh, Tails? What is up with all this?"

"I told you, Skylanders is a video game here on Earth. You use the figures to . ." And he explained the concept of the Skylanders games to the two Skylanders. "Look, here are your figures," Tails pulled the figurines of Cynder and Sunburn from the shelf. "And here's the Spyro figurine I used to get the avatar out of," he added.

"Now c'mon, we have to save Skylands. Sunburn, dealing enough damage to a Skylander that's been evilised causes them to be un-evilised. You know, theoretically. I just need the right Skylander,"

Tails cast a knowing eye over all hundred or so of his figurines, eventually settling on a nearby Air Skylander. Pulling Pop Thorn's figurine from the shelf, the three dashed back into the lab, where something strange appeared. A miniature Core of Light.

"Was that here before?" Sunburn asked naively.

"No. I think that's the real Core of Light, on Earth for some reason," Cynder decided.

"The island it was set in was turned completely evil. Naturally the Core would reject it and separate itself from it. I think. But we need to find Hugo, he'd know more about it than me. Let's go!" Cynder and Sunburn jumped through the virtual portal. Tails quickly locked the Core of Light in his safe, then followed them back to Skylands.

Cynder and Sunburn landed on the purple grass quietly. Tails, now in Pop Thorn's form, ruined that by succumbing to an irresistible urge to shout out "Straight to the Point!" (Pop Thorn's catchphrase) His voice now sounded exactly how Pop Thorn did in the game.

The two evilised Skylanders instantly noticed them, and moved to attack.

Cynder electrocuted Drobot while Sunburn teleported all around Stealth Elf and Tails pummelled both with sharpened spines. About three minutes later, Sunburn realised he was attacking a straw dummy and frantically looked around for the real Stealth Elf.

One of Cynder's ghosts dealt the final decisive blow to Drobot and he was knocked back against a nearby apple tree as the Darkness left him. He groggily shook his head. "What happened?"

"Tell you later. We need to find Stealth Elf before she attacks us again," Drobot weakly gestured towards the train. "She's over there. By the Ancients, what happened to this place?"

"It was evilised," Tails told him, watching Cynder and Sunburn run towards Stealth Elf.

Sunburn basically set fire to the train, causing Stealth Elf to leap out, and Cynder knocked her out with lightning, causing her to revert to normal. The two dragons carried her back to where Tails was explaining everything that had happened in, well, the last fifteen minutes, to Drobot.

"So, what's the plan?" the tech dragon asked.

Tails thought for a second, then had an idea. "When does the Cloudbreak Volcano next erupt?"

"Two weeks, why?"

"The Core of Light is back on Earth. If we can get it to the Cloudbreak Volcano when it erupts, then the light magic contained in the Core might supercharge the Volcano, spreading pure goodness all over Skylands and de-evilising everything Kaos and co. used that horrible machine on. Including the other Skylanders,"

"Cloudbreak's a tough neighbourhood. If we're going there, we need reinforcements," Sunburn, who had been sent there on a mission before, supplied.

"Then we need to find some of the other Skylanders and de-evilise them. It's been twenty minutes, they couldn't have gotten far," (Tails - this is something I am going to put in to show who said something in a long conversation where it would be too inconvenient to say who in a proper sentence)

"Except all three of the ships have gone - and those things move fast!" (Sunburn)

"You mean to tell me that all sixty-six of the other Skylanders - eight of which are Giants - could have fitted on those ships?" (Tails)

"He makes a good point. At least twenty of the Skylanders wouldn't have fitted on those ships. Unless Kaos brought more ships, which I doubt, and seeing as the flying Skylanders couldn't fly long-distance in this wind, at least some of those twenty or so should be around here somewhere, probably wreaking havoc due to their new evil nature," (Drobot)

"So, that plume of smoke coming from that nearby island is probably some of our friends?" (Cynder)

"Probably. Cynder, you stay here and keep an eye on Stealth Elf. Everyone else, let's go!" (Tails)

Cynder, who was panting from the effort of combatting Drobot and Stealth Elf, nodded in agreement and lay down next to the unconscious elf. The other three Skylanders took off towards the nearby Skyland.

**Thanks for the reviews, everyone. Numbuh (I think I got it right this time) 94, I took your advice into consideration, created separate personality plans for the different characters and modified Chapters 2 to 5 accordingly. Zap's the more timid type, Camo's an overconfident prankster, Sunburn's the sort of person who thinks he can get through life with his looks and so isn't that smart and Stealth Elf and Hex are serious, straight-to-the-point, no-nonsense types. I only uploaded five chapters in one day because I had already written them over the past couple of weeks and didn't see any reason to keep people waiting. Chapter 7's 2/3 finished, after that one I will update at a relatively normal pace.**


	7. Reinforcement Liberation

Ch. 7: Reinforcement Liberation

Tails, Drobot and Sunburn landed on the Skyland that was smoking. A Blast Zone that looked almost exactly like the Dark Blast Zone variant was blowing stuff up left and right, while a purple Trigger Happy with black guns and a Free Ranger which was, well, you get the picture by now, was chasing innocent Mabu around. "Drobot, take out Free Ranger. Sunburn, deal with Trigger Happy. I'll switch to Sonic Boom and take out Blast Zone, then we can see why there's a giant rock spire over there," (Tails)

"Sonic Boom? But you're male, and she's female," (Sunburn)

"They're computer-generated avatars, something tells me gender doesn't apply as much as normal," (Tails)

Drobot found it a simple matter to launch a bladegear into Free Ranger's whirlwind, then pummel him with lasers until he became good again.

Dealing with Trigger Happy was a bigger challenge for Sunburn, but he managed it by using a big piece of stone that Blast Zone had helpfully blown off a destroyed building as a shield. It was Drobot's idea. It got shot to pieces, but it allowed Sunburn to get close enough to use the tactic he had employed on Stealth Elf to great results.

Tails, now in Sonic Boom's form, threw up a trio of babies (when upgrading Sonic Boom, he had taken the other path and so couldn't summon all four) and, due to Sonic Boom's babies being part of Sonic Boom in-game, in a way, experienced the curious sensation of living through four bodies at once. Being a genius, he soon worked out how to make this work, and set the babies grabbing hold of Blast Zone's body and clawing at it while he, as Sonic Boom herself, dive-bombed him.

"Note to self - if this is what the minion summoning thing is like, never use Pop Fizz or Double Trouble," Tails muttered to himself - with some difficulty, talking with a beak was not easy.

Tails head-butted Blast Zone into a cliff, and he returned to normal. Drobot, Sunburn, Trigger Happy and Boom Jet, the latter two of which had been filled in about everything that had happened, came over in concern.

Tails reabsorbed Sonic Boom's kids (and resolved to think of them as SONIC BOOM's kids, because he was okay with how weird Skylands in general was, but thinking of the little griffins as his kids was just too much for him) and went over to Blast Zone.

"Drobot, what have you got under 'waking someone up'?"

Drobot couldn't help but chuckle. "It is so weird to hear Sonic Boom's voice giving orders. This is going to take some getting used to,"

Free Ranger shoved him aside. "Allow me,"

He clicked his fingers, and a small , but fast tornado appeared, with him making it as fast as it would go. The high-pitched whine it emitted was irritating to everyone, especially Tails with his enhanced griffin hearing, but it did the trick and woke Blast Zone up.

"How come you use that thing all the time, but we never heard that whine?" Trigger Happy asked curiously. "That thing usually goes way slower, so the whine it emits is way quieter," Free Ranger replied.

"Now let's go see what's making that giant stone . . . . thing," Drobot decided, using a wing to point towards the ever-growing slab of rock. The six Skylanders got moving, Drobot and Free Ranger speeding ahead due to their enhanced flight capabilities. And of all the topics they could be discussing, Trigger Happy and Sunburn were betting on who was creating the giant rocky pillar.

"It's gotta be Bash. Surely only he can create this sort of thing," (Trigger Happy)

"Don't be ridiculous. Prism Break can, Crusher can, Flashwing can, and odds are Doom Stone and Rubble Rouser can," (Sunburn)

Tails smacked them both in the face with the tuft at the end of his tail. "Focus!"

"My money's on Crusher," Sunburn whispered.

"I think Bash," Trigger Happy replied, equally quietly.

They rounded a corner, and came face to face with the last Skylander they expected to see.

"Hoot Loop?" (Blast Zone)

"Weren't you evilised?" (Drobot)

"I recognised the eviliser from a previous encounter, long story, don't ask, and just before it fired, I managed to teleport myself and Chill out of the area. Evilised Rubble Rouser and Bash are over there, but don't worry. It's time for The Amazing Hoot Loop to give his latest performance," Hoot Loop explained, donning a purple cape.

**Ooh, a magic show. This is going to be very fun for me to write. Anyway, that's everything on my drive. I was going to put the part where they combatted Rubble Rouser and Bash in this chapter, but while I was working out what Hoot Loop's personality should be like, I read his character bio and found out that before joining the Skylanders Hoot Loop was a famous illusionist. I wondered what it would be like if he made defeating an evilised Skylander a performance, thought of a great line with - no, I'm not going to spoil it, and decided it would be too much fun to pass up. I'm on school holiday, so I'm going to have plenty of time to write for the rest of the week.**

**I can ramble on about anything. Peace!**


	8. The Amazing Hoot Loop's Performance

Ch. 8: The Amazing Hoot Loop's Performance

"I won the bet," Trigger Happy told Sunburn.

"Shush! The show's about to start!" the phoenix dragon told him.

"I don't think it's an actual show. You know how theatrical Hoot Loop can be," Blast Zone told the arguing duo.

Then all of a sudden the lights dimmed, which was saying something, because the evil clouds had disappeared half an hour ago and the light was coming from the sun. A podium made of ice rose up from the ground, which Chill was standing on. "Introdu'ting . . . . The Amazing Hoot Loop!"

"Why t'id I agree to t'is?" Chill muttered, clasping the flat part of her javelin to her armoured forehead. Evil Rubble Rouser and Bash turned and moved towards her, and she promptly vanished into thin air.

"Told you it would be a show," Sunburn smiled at Trigger Happy and Blast Zone.

Trigger Happy pulled a camera out of nowhere and set it to record. Tails looked over and asked "Where did you get that camera?"

"The same place I got this popcorn," Trigger Happy replied, brandishing a bag of popcorn at the griffin. Drobot nudged him. "He's always like this - don't pursue it!" the tech dragon warned his ally.

Two balls of magical light came out of each side of the raised podium, which was slowly melting, and came together high in the air to reveal Hoot Loop, brandishing his staff at the sky.

"Welcome, welcome, everyone! I am The Amazing Hoot Loop, here tonight to give you an awesome performance,"

"Told you he was theatrical," Blast Zone muttered, shaking his head.

Hoot Loop suddenly teleported to a point right in front of Rubble Rouser, who began moving towards him, brandishing his hammer in a menacing manner. "Now you see me," Hoot Loop suddenly teleported to a point just behind evilised Rubble Rouser and quickly tied a blindfold around his head. "Now you don't see anything!"

A giant pillar of ice came into existence directly beneath the evil Skylander, lifting him some ten feet into the air. Rubble Rouser just pulled off the blindfold and created a giant stone staircase all the way down. He began to descend.

Hoot Loop shook a taloned fist at the other Skylander. "Oy! That's not in the script!"

Rubble Rouser, oblivious to the magician's protests, continued to descend the stone staircase.

"No one deviates from my script! You're going down - literally!" And with that, Rubble Rouser suddenly found himself unable to move. Then the floor disappeared from beneath him.

The golem smashed into the ground, and the Darkness left him. This time, though, it did not dissipate into thin air, but congealed on the ground.

"Clean-up on aisle four!" Hoot Loop shouted to nobody in particular, and amazingly an exact copy of Hoot Loop, except with a bucket and mop, dashed over to clean it up. Then the real Hoot Loop spotted evil Bash rolling towards him armadillo-style.

"And now for act two!"

Evil Bash suddenly found himself surrounded by Hoot Loops, each identical to the point of being totally unable to tell the difference between the real one and a fake.

The ground beneath each Hoot Loop began to rise, and soon the evil dragon found himself boxed in. All of the Hoot Loops hit him with a magic beam at the same time, raising him into the air and throwing him into a stone wall that everyone thought wasn't there before, but no one could swear to it.

All of the assembled Skylanders, including Chill, who had joined the others, and a group of elves and Mabu who had flocked to watch what was happening, applauded. Some more grudgingly than others.

Blast Zone flew over to Hoot Loop. "Okay, you've had your theatre fun. Now, we need to rendezvous with Cynder and Stealth Elf and get some transportation. We sure as heck can't fly back to Cloudbreak," (Blast Zone)

"Wait, why are we going back to Cloudbreak?" (Hoot Loop)

"Mr Incredibly Stupid Genius over there reckons it's the only way to undo all the damage Kaos and his mother caused," (Blast Zone)

"I heard that!" (Tails)

"Great, let's go. Ow! Ow! Ow, hey, hey, hey!" (Rubble Rouser as Hoot Loop lifts him up)

**I thought this would be fun to write, and I was write. Ha ha ha. So Hoot Loop's a comedic, theatrical clown. I came up with that when I read his bio and found out he was part of a circus before joining the Skylanders. F.Y.I., Numbuh 94, I beat you to using the Swap Forces in a fanfiction. Heck, I beat almost everyone to using the Swap Forces in a fanfiction. splashfire99, I am a fan of 'You belong with me'. Just wanna say.**

**Seriously, people, review! I have received a total of four reviews, three of which are actually related to The Dragon Chronicles.**

**And I have a special surprise planned for the next chapter. I think it's safe to say nobody will expect it. Except me. Muhuwahaha!**

**I think Hoot Loop's rubbing off on me. Peace!**


	9. We have a Plan, Right?

Ch. 9: We have a Plan, Right?

All twelve Skylanders had gotten back together and were trying to come up with a proper plan. Because ten out of twelve of them agreed that 'Go to the Cloudbreak Islands, use the Core of Light to supercharge the volcano's magic and let the spread of light-charged magic de-evilise everything' wasn't a proper plan.

Tails and Sunburn were the two who disagreed, Tails because it had been his plan, and Sunburn was, well, Sunburn.

"We need to find a ship!" (Stealth Elf)

"We can just fly!" (Free Ranger)

"Me and Stealth can't fly!" (Trigger Happy)

"Don't call me Stealth!" (Stealth Elf)

"Statistically speaking, the odds of us being able to fly to Cloudbreak with our own flight abilities before the volcano erupts are 2.587 million to one. The location of a ship is crucial to our plan," (Drobot)

"Stow it, C-3PO, we all know that!" (Bash)

"Since when were you a fan of Star Wars?" (Free Ranger)

"Wait, wait, wait, since when did Star Wars exist in Skylands?" (Tails)

"Scott brought his collection of DVDs when he moved to Skylands. A lot of the Skylanders quite enjoyed the various movie nights, probably due to my show-stopping openings. I still remember everyone shouting at me to get off the stage and give out autographs. Except they never mentioned the second part," (Hoot Loop)

"Because you stank!" (Blast Zone)

"Can we please get back to the topic of trying to save Skylands?!" (Stealth Elf getting angry)

"If for no other reason than to shut her up, does anyone have any ideas?" (Drobot)"

"Chill and Cynder have been awfully quiet over there. They must be thinking something," (Trigger Happy)

The group went over to the two girls. "Well?" Sunburn asked.

"Well what?" Cynder replied.

"Well what have you been talking about?" Blast Zone cut straight to the heart of the matter.

"Ways to get to Cloudbreak," Chill told the Fire Skylander.

"Aaaaaaaannnd?" Bash drew the word out into five syllables.

"And we have nothing, so get your muzzle out of my face before I electrocute it," Cynder told the flightless dragon, staring him down.

Bash visibly backed away under her penetrating stare.

Sunburn looked around. "Hey, wasn't Sonic Boom with us before?"

Bash, eager for an excuse to move away from Cynder, slapped him in the face. "That was Tails, not Sonic Boom, but you're right, where is he?"

A loud crack came from the side of the island, where, of all things, a pirate ship had suddenly appeared. Tails, now in Polaris' (Whirlwind's snow-white brother) form, was standing on the deck.

The other Skylanders hastened over. "Polaris?" Free Ranger asked.

"Who? No, it's me, Tails. I'm using a Polar Whirlwind figure,"

"So you took t'e form of Whirlwind's brother Polaris?" (Chill)

"Wait, Whirlwind has a brother that looks like this? Oh, come on!" Tails complained.

"And where did you get the pirate ship?" Stealth Elf asked.

"Disney Infinity. Remember I mentioned Skylanders was a video game in my world? Well, Disney Infinity was basically a knock-off of Skylanders. I think it's stupid, and wouldn't waste a cent on it, but my sister likes it. But one useful feature it did have was 'Toybox' mode. Basically, you could use anything you wanted to create anything you like. Anyway, I went back to Earth, rewired the device I used to scan the Skylanders games for the creation of my virtuality, loaded the Disney Infinity game into it and used it's Toybox mode to program the pirate ship from Disney: Pirates of the Carribean to fly and send it through the Skylands portal and into existence here in Skylands. Don't mean to brag, but I am a genius! Problem is, that seriously heated up the machine. I'll need to give it a cooldown period of a few hours, so I'd better not run out of health or it might explode, either trapping me here forever or outright killing me," Tails explained.

There was silence for five seconds.

"Anyone understand a word of that?" Trigger Happy asked. There was a unanimous shaking of heads.

"Okay, it doesn't matter where he got it. What matters is we now have transportation to Cloudbreak. Everybody on the ship!" Stealth Elf ordered through her mask.

The flight to Cloudbreak was relatively uneventful, except for the part where Trigger Happy and Sunburn got curious about the cannons on the deck and almost blew up half of Leviathan Lagoon. After that, Blast Zone made sure that all of the ammunition was carefully hidden.

"SKYLANDERS!" Kaos cursed as he slammed his fist down on the edge of his Portal of Power.

Kaos was a runt. He literally came from a species known as 'Runts'. But even by Runt standards, Kaos was small.

Runts were a species amazingly similar to humans. Legend even had it that Runts were descended from a group of humans who used to live on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean that was sucked into a giant Portal and dropped in the middle of Skylands. Both Eon and Kaos were Runts, but Eon was tall by Runt standards and Kaos was short. That and Eon had been about seventy years older than Kaos when Kaos killed him, almost three years ago.

"HOW DID EVEN ONE SKYLANDER ESCAPE MY BLAST? HOW?" Kaos yelled angrily.

"Now, now, son, we expected this, remember? We knew at least four of the Skylanders had short-range teleportation powers. That's why we left several evilised Skylanders in the vicinity. To keep them occupied,"

The lilting, soothing drawl came from Kaos' mother, who was sitting in a throne at the far end of the hall.

"And sooner or later, they will all fall to Darkness," Darkus, (Dark Spyro) who was sitting on a navy-and-silver cushion that matched his scales, added, flicking his tail like a cat. His scales were a deep navy blue colour, and his horns, spines, wings and tail-tip were a glistening silver.

Kaos' mother rubbed him between his wing joints, in just the place he loved. "I knew creating you would be a good idea. Darkus, you're like the son I never had,"

Kaos, who had been muttering angrily to himself, looked up in shock. "You had a son! I'm your son!"

His mother looked at him disdainfully. "I meant a son I was actually at all proud of. You failed to take over Skylands two hundred times! You're lucky I haven't disowned you,"

"What? That's not even possible! I've only even tried to take over Skylands a hundred and forty-seven times! And I know, I've been keeping a log," At the last sentence, the small Runt pulled out a small brown book. Darkus flew over and took a look at it.

"This is the 'All-inclusive Girl's Diary and Guide to Everything in your Teenage Years'. Features a sewing kit, Whirlwind's Guide to Gossip, Flashwing's Guide to Finding the Perfect Date Outfit and a wall-length poster of Flameslinger, the hottest elf in Skylands - without a shirt. Brother, I doubt you could be more pathetic if you tried,"

"I'm not your brother!" Kaos shouted in Darkus's face, before storming down to his basement.

"Blasted mother - and blasted dragon! Coming in here and just taking control of everything! She even gave my tower to him!"

Kaos used to have a tower to himself in his castle. Then his mother arrived, moved all his stuff to the grimy dungeon he was in now and gave the whole tower to Darkus. The whole tower! And that stupid, antagonising, eviller-than-thou dragon had torn the roof off and thrown it into the middle of Rumbletown and, of all things, built a permanent tornado in Kaos' old, now-roofless bedroom! Something about keeping his flight abilities sharp. Kaos usually tuned the reptilian jerk out.

The worst part was, Darkus wasn't even a real dragon! Proper dragons, despite their reptilian appearance, were warm-blooded, but that monstrosity was cold-blooded. Like a snake! And he was basically a pure evil version of Spyro, Kaos' sworn enemy! Darkus had literally been created using Spyro's DNA, something his mother had in abundance now that Spyro had been evilised. Of course, she had to de-evilise him to get a DNA sample, but it was simple enough to re-evilise him afterwards.

At which point Kaos had an idea. Oh, it was a terrible idea. Oh, it was a great idea. Oh, it was an idea he would put into effect as soon as he had let loose with a maniacal laugh.

"Muhuwahahahaha! MUHUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

**What? I never said I'd use the same variant names as Numbuh 94.**

**Oooooh, Kaos has an evil plan. Go ahead, speculate. I notice nobody took guesses as to what the surprise was. It was that there were two surprises! The Disney Infinity pirate ship thing, and Darkus. My original plan was to make Darkus the evilised Spyro, but then I realised that creating an entirely new character for that part might make some very interesting future plot twists. F.Y.I., I'm basically making most of this up as I go along. Sure, I have a basic plan, but beyond that, yep, all stuff on the fly.**

**Oh, and Seraph, I live in Australia. Luckily, the fact that I am a very die-hard researcher really helps this story. Besides, Swap Force is released the the U.S. in ten days. And the Spyro wikia has all of the Swap Force Skylander bios. Plus, I'm still trying to figure out what Blast Zone and Rubble Rouser should be like. In any case, thanks for the idea of Kaos confusion with Tails' transformation. I didn't think of that. And that, together with Darkus, is going to make an epic plot segment further down the line. Also, did I fail to make it clear that Tails' voice changes to however the Skylander sounds in-game? I thought I put that in, but I might have missed it. I'll look over it.**

**This is the longest chapter yet. It would have been way shorter, but when I was writing this, I felt something was missing. And that something was a check-in with the bad guys.**

**I am very good at rambling on. I actually got Tails to ramble on about where he got the ship, then again with Kaos' ranting about Darkus.**

**I really have to stop doing that. Peace!**


	10. Darkus' Past and Kaos' Mistake

Ch. 10: Darkus' Past and Kaos' Mistake

Kaos was wrong. Darkus was a real dragon. The thing was, his scales were thicker than Kaos thought they were, meaning not much heat escaped through his skin. This gave Darkus the double effect of having a natural armour covering almost his entire body, and it trapped enough heat inside him to supercharge his fire-breathing. The only downside of that was that it made his scales cold to the touch, making simple-minded jokes like Kaos believe he was cold-blooded.

This was what was going through Darkus' mind when he heard Kaos' rant about him. That dungeon was a lot less sound-proof than he thought it was.

In all honesty, Darkus had nothing but contempt for his step-brother. Kaos was a complete joke, especially compared to their mother.

According to his mother, Darkus had been an abandoned baby dragonet she had found on the outskirts of Dragon's Peak. His mother being nowhere in sight, she took the little dragon in.

She had laced his premature, undeveloped DNA with that of the legendary purple dragons, including Spyro, fused with liquid Petrified Darkness. Hence his resemblance to the great Skylander. Darkus wasn't as powerful as a true purple dragon, but he was like a knock-off of one; not quite as good as the real thing, but closer to and better than everything other than the real thing, and he had some dark abilities even the original Spyro didn't have.

Darkus couldn't remember his real parents, but he did have one thing that Kaos' mother had said had been around his front-right ankle when she found him: a curious leather strap with a very small clock set in it. Neither Darkus, nor Kaos or his mother had any idea what it was, but scratched on the inside of the clock were the letters 'CA'. He could only assume they were the initials of his long-lost father, or maybe mother. So he wore it everywhere.

Darkus didn't blame Kaos's mother for deliberately changing his DNA. It had made him more powerful and given him an innate knowledge of several abilities and powers he never could have hoped to even attempt without her assistance. And she was the closest thing to family he had ever known.

Darkus didn't feel bad about taking over Kaos' tower as he walked towards it. It was how his mother had brought him up. "If you want something, take it. Never let anything stand in your way," Her voice echoed in his mind. But sometimes he wondered why it was so, because if everyone took what they wanted like that, nobody would ever get anything. He had once asked her about that. "It's a matter of being strong enough to take what you want. Lots of people aren't strong enough. But if you want to get anywhere in life, my dear Darkus, you have to be,"

Kaos was weak. Darkus wasn't. A sly smile crept across the dragon's face at the latest thoughts. If Kaos wasn't weak, he wouldn't have let his mother and Darkus just walk right in and take over. If Kaos wasn't weak, he wouldn't have let Darkus take control of his tower. If Kaos wasn't weak, he'd be doing something rebellious, something to get his mother and Darkus out of his castle. Something like -

A loud clang echoed through the castle. It was a sound Darkus knew all too well, for he heard it every time the mother let him into a captive purple dragon's cage to absorb more of their DNA. Darkus derived a sick, twisted pleasure from making the other being scream. It wasn't strictly necessary, but Darkus enjoyed it. Then he realised what the clang meant.

Five minutes earlier . . .

Kaos quietly snuck down the stairs to the lower dungeon where the prisoners were kept. It was rather empty, neither Kaos or his mum were the type to take prisoners. But an exception had been made for Spyro. He had been evilised, but they weren't taking chances with a being of his calibre.

Spyro was suspended in midair with clamps around all four of his legs, his tail, his neck, and his muzzle. There was a thick coil of rope around his waist, holding his wings in place against his sides.

Kaos tapped a button and a giant boxing glove, similar to Night Shift's famous uppercut, whammed into Spyro's underbelly. The Darkness was literally knocked out of him.

Spyro shook his head, and came to. "Kaos," he growled upon recognising the figure in front of him. "Come to gloat about your victory? I've been here almost five hours. Took you long enough,"

"I know, I know, sworn enemies and all that. I've come to make you a deal," (Kaos)

"What deal?" Spyro asked through his bound muzzle.

"I can't take it anymore! My mother, and Darkus, both absolutely destroying everything I care for! And 'Lights out'. That stupid dragon imposter keeps saying 'Lights out'!" (Kaos)

"You care for stuff?" (Spyro)

"I'll set you free, I'll tell you how to de-evilise the other Skylanders, just, please, PLEASE kick them out of here!" (Kaos)

"You're asking me to deal with the mother of all evil and my exact equal at the same time single-handedly. That's suicide,"

"PLEASE! I CAN'T TAKE THEM ANYMORE!"

Kaos pulled the lever that opened the cage and released the restraints. Resulting in the loud clang that Darkus heard.

Just as Darkus arrived in the doorway, Spyro took flight, scratching Kaos in the face as he soared past and straight out the window. Darkus speedily followed, extending his wings and rocketing towards the other dragon.

Spyro stopped and twisted in mid-air, Darkus sped by him, Spyro dashed underneath a nearby Skyland, coming out at the far side. "Hey, is that Molekin Mine?" Spyro muttered in amazement. It was, although in the two-and-a-half years since Spyro had been there, it appeared to have fallen into disuse.

It was the perfect place to hide from Darkus.

Or lay in wait and set a trap for him. Whichever worked.

Spyro realised the mine-shaft was too small for him to fly through there. Luckily, when the Molekin had abandoned the mine, they had left a couple of mine carts lying around.

Darkus swept into the mine, holding his wings out in an attempt to look majestic. Since they kept scraping against the sides of the tunnel, it didn't really work.

Darkus listened carefully, and heard the sound of a mine cart trundling down the tracks further down the tunnel. "I've got you now, purple dragon,"He climbed into another mine cart and rode down the tunnel in pursuit.

Spyro tiptoed out of a nearby side passage and, once he had established Darkus was far away enough, strutted out of the mine, a victorious smirk upon his face. He located the tracks that lead to the Core of Light and walked along them.

Spyro was just about home free.

Meanwhile Darkus was rattling along in the cart. The other one, the one he thought Spyro was in, was coming up close. As soon as the gap was small enough, he leapt into the other cart - and landed on a box chock-full of TNT. With a fuse that had burnt down to five centimetres. "Oh dear," Darkus thought to say before the explosive blew him straight out of the mine like a cannonball. A cannonball that had been severely knocked around by the force of being uncontrollably pushed a high speeds through a very twisted and curved stone passageway.

Spyro looked back towards the mine just in time to watch Darkus sail across the sky, and smirked again as he crashed into a boulder on a nearby Skyland. "Lights out," he commented, before stepping through the permanent magical Portal that should take him to the Isle of Light.

**Okay, so this chapter was mainly to introduce Darkus a little more.**

**If anyone's wondering, 'Lights Out' is said to be Dark Spyro's catchphrase. Or so I've been told. I don't actually have a Dark Spyro yet.**

**I know, I know, everyone wanted to see what's happening to Tails and co., but all this is going to become important later. Trust me.**

**Oh, and if you hadn't noticed, I added Tails' surname to the start of the first chapter. Take a look, it's also going to be important later.**

**By the way, Numbuh 94, I read your review and the only reason Chill's German accent (well, I think it's either German or Russian) hasn't really been shown is because she was only brought in a couple of chapters ago, and I haven't really had a chance to get her involved in a big conversation where her accent can be seen more prominently. A****nd yeah, the focus is really meant to be on Tails, Cynder, Sunburn and Darkus at present, everybody else is really more 'side-character' type for now, so forgive me if they don't seem as detailed as some of the others. The only reason Hoot Loop was so well detailed was so that I could write about his performance better. And F.Y.I., I got the idea of Hoot Loop copying himself from his bio, which said he was a famous illusionist. And I think that when Zap comes back, I'm going to make sure I change how his voice sounds. It sounds ridiculous in Giants. But you're also right about Swap Force. Why do you think I've switched the focus of the last chapter or so to the bad guys?**


	11. The Flight to the Isle of Night

Ch. 11: The Flight to the Isle of Night

The ship had been flying through Skylands for five hours, and all bar two of the Skylanders aboard had gone to sleep. Tails was still piloting the ship, and Drobot was still furiously trying to work out how the ship even flew. There were no visible engines, no machinery other than the tiller and the rudder, there wasn't even a magic signature. Drobot had flitted around the ship several times by now, and had found scientific squat.

"Give it up, Dro," Tails called from the open-air helm. He was still in Polarus' form and was using a special tiller set into the ground, designed for dragonoids. The hybrid locked the tiller into place with a little mechanism he had improvised, and walked to the side of the ship to watch Drobot.

"Don't call me 'Dro'!" the cyber dragon boomed, using his vocal synthesisers at maximum volume.

There was just something about Tails that really ground Drobot's gears. Drobot chuckled at the accidental pun, and made a note of it on his suit's memory banks. His personality analysis technology had been working on Tails from the minute Drobot met him, and it had come up with the results that the two were very similar.

That was to say, they were both very smart, they were both quite witty, they both had poor social skills, they could both achieve anything if they put their mind to it, they had both invented something to try and make themselves a place in their respective worlds, and they had both failed, so all of Drobot's computers said that they should be best of friends.

But they could barely stand each other. Well, Drobot couldn't stand Tails. He wasn't sure if the feeling was mutual or not. Drobot hated it when things didn't match up with his data in situations like this.

Then he realised he had been so deep in thought he had missed the rest of what Tails had said. It happened a lot to the cyber dragon, so he had installed audio playback in his helmet. He activated it with a series of winks, and a recording of Tails said "Give it up, Dro! I already explained how this thing works and why there is no engine! Stop looking for one!"

Then it struck him, why he didn't like Tails. Before, Drobot was the smartest Skylander in the last hundred years. Then Tails came along, and Drobot suddenly had competition for the title of 'Smartest Skylander'. Sure, Tails technically wasn't a Skylander, but he consistently took the forms of Skylanders and to almost everyone else, that seemed to make him count as one of them. Drobot didn't like it, and found it hard to believe that he had come along so conveniently, at a time of such need. Sure, Cynder and Sunburn had said they saw his lab, and how Tails really looked, but nobody but Spyro trusted Cynder anyway and Sunburn, really wasn't the brightest Skylander in the ranks.

Drobot shook his head and landed on the deck. Flying around the ship thinking through this over and over again wouldn't help. Loath as he was to do anything Tails suggested, even he needed sleep. Drobot took off his suit and set it to 'Trapped' mode, told Tails that if he even touched his suit, Drobot would single-handedly throw him into the Lava Lakes, then snuggled up in a coil of rope and fell asleep.

Everyone woke as the ship suddenly ran aground. Chill and Stealth Elf were the first awake. They glared over at Bash, who had been piloting the ship and was currently looking around frantically. "What t'a heck are you t'oing? You ran us aground, you t'ick-headed rock!" (Chill)

"I don't understand! One minute I was piloting the ship through empty sky, the next this island suddenly appeared out of nowhere and crashed into me!" (Bash)

Stealth Elf narrowed her eyes. "So you didn't think to dodge a bank of clouds that could be concealing anything?"

"There were no clouds! The Skyland literally appeared out of thin air! And believe me, I know about thin air," Bash told the elven ninja, a frantic look on his face. He was making a reference to his many failed attempts at flight.

"Uh, Steal't El't? I don't t'ink Bash is lying. Look around, t'ere isn't a cloud in t'e sky," (Chill)

Stealth Elf grudgingly tore her blank, pupil-less eyes off the cowering dragon beneath her and looked around the area. Chill was correct, there wasn't a cloud anywhere near. "I hate being wrong," she muttered into her mask.

Stealth Elf liked to think of herself as a proud, fearless, merciless, ferocious, perfect elven ninja warrior. Emphasis on 'proud' and 'warrior'. Her suit was brown leather win gold highlights, and her blue hair was tied into a neat plait. Which was surprisingly useful in combat. Unlike Drobot, her social skills were fine, but she was the sort of person who cut things into shreds first, and asked questions later. This resulted in her hardly being the most popular Skylander, especially with the dragonoid Skylanders due to her daggers being made out of dragon teeth. But Stealth Elf couldn't care less what people thought of her, and blatantly refused to let what people thought of her affect her outlook.

But the one thing she couldn't stand was anything offending her pride. Even a little thing like being wrong about who booed Hoot Loop the loudest deeply injured her pride. Stealth Elf was one of those people who strove to be perfect, and couldn't abide being less than perfect.

"But it is scientifically impossible for a Skyland to materialise out of thin air," Drobot pointed out. Stealth Elf rolled her eyes, not that anyone could see it. "The way it's scientifically impossible for Eruptor, or Wrecking Ball, or Skylands itself to exist?"

"I do not recall ever vocalising an opinion of Skylands' existence being impossible. I distinctly remember publishing a paper on a magnetic repellant theory,"

Stealth Elf activated her ninja garb's 'Night Suit' mode and tucked her long, pointy ears into it's mask so that it would drown out Drobot's annoying, mechanically synthesised voice. The 'Night Suit' mode had been a birthday present from the Tech Skylanders on her birthday a couple of months ago. Between the Skylanders, if everybody got a gift from everybody at their birthday and Christmas, they'd all be really cheap and pathetic, so it was only necessary for each Elemental Group to give a present to whoever's birthday it was. So Stealth Elf had gotten a present from the Air Skylanders, a present from the Tech Skylanders, a present from the Earth Skylanders and so on. It was allowed to give somebody a present just from a single person, but only really close friends did that.

The 'Night Suit' was an enhancement of her ninja suit that had retractable black whole-body covering and two spare blades concealed in the footwear. The material had been laced with Kevlar, which, according to one of her best friends, Sprocket, was a really tough Earth substance she had found out how to make with Scott's computer.

"Wha-whaa? What's going on? Where are we?" Tails, who had at some time during the night switched to Jade Flashwing, asked. Luckily for him, Jade's rich, silky voice disguised his grogginess. "Yep, the voice thing is going to take some serious getting used to," he added, looking down his white, green-tinged muzzle.

"Bash ran us aground on a Skyland that apparently appeared out of thin air in front of him," Stealth Elf explained to the crystal dragon.

Tails shook his head, either from grogginess or disapproval nobody could tell, extended his wings and jumped over the side of the ship.

And fell face first into the dirt. The other Skylanders couldn't help but laugh. "Didn't your game tell you Jade was a flightless dragon?" Rubble Rouser jeered. And then ducked as a green crystal soared over his head and embedded itself in his hammer.

Cynder took off and soared down to where Tails was rubbing the crystals protruding from the back of his head and helped him back onto his feet. "Ignore him, Rubble Rouser can be a really big jerk when he wants to be. In other words, whenever I'm around," the dragoness explained. "But seriously, didn't you know Flashwing and Jade can't fly?"

"It was a reasonable guess. In the game, Sunburn couldn't fly, but he can here," Tails explained. Cynder nodded, understanding.

As if to prove his point, Sunburn flew down to him, Trigger Happy in his claws. At almost the same time, all four Skylanders noticed a massive hole in the ship's hull.

"Okay, the four of us, Drobot and Stealth Elf will explore the island, and try to find someone who can fix that giant hole in the ship. Everyone else, guard the ship,"

Drobot carried Stealth Elf down to the other four, and they started walking. "So what's your plan, Mr. Incredibly Stupid Genius?" Drobot asked scathingly. But no one could tell he said it scathingly, due to his voice modifier.

"Three groups of two. Me and Cynder, Stealth and Trigg, you and Sunburn. We'll split up and try to find somebody who can fix the ship,"

The island was a strange one. It appeared to be a sort of peninsula leading to a large hub surrounded by mountains on all sides.

When they had followed the peninsula to a pass through the mountains, the path split into three. Wordlessly, Drobot and Sunburn took the left path, Tails and Cynder took the middle path, and Stealth Elf and Trigger Happy took the right path.

**Oooh, mysterious island. And yes, from this point onwards I am going to put in descriptions of characters like I just did for Drobot and Stealth Elf - when there is a part of the story where they become important, not whenever I introduce them. Sunburn's and Trigger Happy's will be in the next chapter, but before writing that I'm going to go back to Chapter 5 and put in one for Cynder. So remember to check back there.**


	12. I Hope I'm Wrong About This Place

Ch. 12: I Hope I'm Wrong About This Place

"There's something about this place that's messing with my servers," Drobot told Sunburn, using three paws for walking, and one for fiddling with his suit.

"Dude, what are servers?" Sunburn replied, a curious look on his face.

Sunburn had been complimented on his handsomeness several hundred times, mainly by crushing female dragons. It was why he had been sleeping in the hollow hull of the Dread-Yacht - so that they wouldn't find him. Jade, Sonic Boom, Whirlwind, they all wanted him to be theirs. And he couldn't blame them. Look at the natural golden highlights in his feathers! Plus his personality. If there was one word to describe Sunburn, it was 'flashy'. He rather enjoyed showing off, and used to do so to anyone who would watch. Socially, he was nice enough, if a bit self-centred, kind of like Flynn with manners.

But after Jet-Vac recruited Scratch the SPHINX a couple of months ago, and she started chasing him just like the rest, he realised that things were getting a little out of hand. Sunburn hadn't even known sphinxes existed until he met her. There was some crazy love-life-action going on in the Skylander ranks. Spyro was crushing on Cynder, which was mutual between the two dragons, then there were the practically inseparable duo of Bash and Flashwing. They perfectly evened each other out. But every other quadruped girl was chasing him. Sunburn was literally the only thing that could pull Sonic Boom away from her tower-top nest, where she spent most of her time with her hatchlings for the few minutes they could stay out of their cursed shells.

Sunburn spent a lot of time keeping a chart of who was with who. Everybody, including Sunburn, knew he wasn't the brightest, so he made himself socially useful by being the 'Skylander Dating God'. He was the only Skylander who hadn't been gasping in amazement when Smoulderdash had started dating Grim Creeper, or when Sprocket went out with Zook. That particular pairing prediction had made him famous among the Skylanders, and from then on, whenever anyone wanted to know who was likely to be with who, they asked him.

"Ouch!" Sunburn had been so deep in thought he walked right into a tree. Drobot couldn't help but laugh as the hybrid realised the big spine on his head was embedded in the tree. Sunburn furiously tugged at his head. "Y'now, you could help me get out of here," the phoenix dragon told the cyber dragon irritably. Drobot was still giggling like a little girl, which sounded very strange with his vocal synthesisers. He popped a bladegear out of it's housing in his tail and used it to cut away at the bark until Sunburn was free.

Sunburn looked quite put out - literally. His wings were smoking like a candle that had just been extinguished.

Then a twig snapped nearby. The two dragonoids were instantly alert. "Did you hear that?" Sunburn whispered.

"Does it look like I heard it?" Drobot replied.

Then a large group of - things - came out of the trees around the area and attacked the two Skylanders. No two were alike. They were elven in base body structure, but everything else varied. Some had thick, bushy tails while others had long, sinuous reptilian tails, and yet more had no tail at all but four or six insectoid legs. Fur covered some's bodies, feathers or scales adorned yet more and some had insectoid plating. Some had feathered bird wings, others had scaly dragon wings and some had translucent insectoid wings. Some had no wings at all, usually the furred and some of the scaled ones. Colour varied most of all, everything from the brightest red to the darkest black could be seen on these beasts.

The two dragons were too surprised to even resist as the things bound them in a net and four carried them upon their backs, two dropping to all fours to bear their weight better. Drobot and Sunburn exchanged a worried glance. Or as worried as Drobot could look wearing the helmet. They tried to call out, but there seemed to be some kind of enchantment on the net that prevented them from making any noise at all. Even Drobot's suit's occasional squeak was muffled.

"Trigger Happy! Stop talking about things you've shot in your life!" Stealth Elf cried in exasperation, throwing her hands up to heaven.

The orange gremlin pouted. "Wish Spring were here. He loves talking about things we've shot," Spring was Trigger Happy's lesser-known purple-furred brother who had recently joined the Skylanders and used weaponry identical to Trigger Happy's, but his was silver.

Trigger Happy, Spring, Pop Fizz, Punche (Pop Fizz's red-furred laboratory partner, not genetically related to Pop Fizz but had worked with Pop Fizz so much that the two were like brothers, given his name due to his fur color), Wrecking Ball, Hot Dog and Moltey were basically their own little group. Rare was the occasion when one of them did something without another to back them up. All seven were thought of as either weird or, in Pop Fizz and Punche's case, somewhat insane by the other Skylanders, and so naturally stuck together in their own little cliche.

And they worked well together. Trigger Happy and Spring were slow with their little stumpy legs, but when they piggybacked on Hot Dog and Molta respectively, they moved amazingly fast. And you did not want to be anywhere near Wrecking Ball when he had drunk one of Pop Fizz or Punche's potions.

The orange gremlin pulled a cloth out of nowhere (the same nowhere he got the camera and the popcorn the day before) and started polishing one of his guns, putting the other wherever he had gotten the cloth from. Guncare was very important to Trigger Happy.

Trigger Happy wasn't as dumb as everyone generally thought. Sure, he wasn't a genius like many of the other Tech Skylanders, but he wasn't as dumb as, say, a Slobbering Mutticus, or a Chompy, or Kaos. Socially, he was rather abrupt, and rarely cared what people thought of him for saying what he thought.

"Uh, Trigg, what do you think of this?"

Trigger Happy was jolted out of his reverie by Stealth Elf asking him a question. Her nervous tone scared him. Stealth Elf had once single-handedly broken into the Arkeyan Armoury to retrieve the Eternal Magic Source without breaking a sweat. She had walked out of that place with a new pair of golden daggers and riding an Arkeyan Ultron like Zoo Lou rode his warthog. So if she was scared, what did that say about what they were facing now?

Trigger Happy opened his eyes, which had been closed out of fear, and took a look. It was nothing but an abandoned town.

"What's the big deal, Stealth?"

Trigger Happy knew something was wrong when Stealth Elf didn't respond to his use of her nickname 'Stealth'. Normally,that would have made her throw him straight through the nearest abandoned building like a furry bowling ball.

"Can't you see it?" (Stealth Elf)

"See what?" (Trigger Happy)

"The tendrils of evil all over this place. Twisted through every building like Camo's vines on April Fool's Day,"

Stealth Elf carefully moved into the town. "Huh. They all seem to go in that direction," She indicated an alley to their left. The two Skylanders moved along the alley, Stealth Elf warning Trigger Happy whenever he was about to come into contact with a tendril of darkness.

Then, as soon as they were out of the alley and into another street, they were ambushed by the same things that had attacked Drobot and Sunburn. Stealth Elf was easily incapacitated, but Trigger Happy put up more of a fight, his gun barrels rotating and firing at 120 RPM. Until he came into contact with an invisible cord of darkness, then he suddenly fell forwards, unconscious. The things seemed unaffected by the tendrils, and they stuffed the two Skylanders in a burlap sack and started carrying them to an unknown destination.

Cynder and Tails casually walked down the path. "Am I the only person who thinks this place is kinda creepy?" Tails asked the other dragon, Jade's feminine lilt doing nothing to disguise his fear.

Cynder chuckled. "You should have seen the Crawling Catacombs, back when we needed to get the Skull Mask for the new Core of Light. That was creepy,"

"I did see them. Video game, remember? And yeah, I was ten when I first played that level. I had nightmares for days. The fact that I had arachnophobia at the time really didn't help. But it did help me use Chop Chop's figure to tear them to shreds," Tails reminisced wistfully.

"Remind me to take you there for real someday, when this is all over and we can relax," Cynder smiled, wondering how Tails would react to the place.

"And remind me to show you the video game sometime so you can see just how realistic it seems,"

Cynder couldn't explain it, there was just something about Tails that made her feel like letting loose and relaxing. Tails definitely didn't have this effect on everyone, she had never seen Drobot so tense before. But she had never met anyone else with the same effect on her. Even Spyro, the love of her life, didn't make her feel, well, as relaxed as Tails did. It was just so easy to strike up a conversation with him about, anything. Cynder got the feeling that it would be possible for her to chat with Tails about everything from the possible things he could bring into Skylands with that video game portal of his to the origin of Chompies.

"What? No witty comeback? No reply at all? Cynder, you'd better not be going all sentimental just as I was getting to know you,"

Cynder realised that while she had been thinking, Tails had switched forms into . . . . . . something she didn't recognise. She must have been so deep in thought she had missed him saying the catchphrase. In shape, it was identical to Cynder, but everything else was different. Its scales were golden where Cynder's were a dark purple, its underbelly and wings were grass-green, and its horns, tail and the spurs on its wings were jet-black. And there was no Mark of the Undead on its forehead.

"What's that?" Cynder asked the other dragon.

"I had a spare S2 Cynder figurine lying around after I purchased the Skylanders Battlegrounds Starter Pack. So I gave it my own paint design. Then I hacked into it's RFID chip, modified it's in-game appearance to match the figurine's new paint job and installed a self-installing game programming addition that automatically added 'Supergold Cynder' to the in-game collection roster. This is the result," Tails explained.

"I lost you at around the part where you said 'Skylanders Battlegrounds'," Cynder told the different version of her, frowning. "Can you change to a different Skylander? That's, kinda creepy,"

Tails nodded and disappeared in a flash of light.

Then the same things that had attacked Drobot, Sunburn, Stealth Elf and Trigger Happy attacked her. This time, one that looked somewhat like a black-and-white version of Stink Bomb gave off a massive fart and rendered her inable to focus, then they threw a net over her like the one they did with Drobot and Sunburn and carried her away.

Tails reappeared a few seconds later, now as Drobot. "Blink and Destroy!" he couldn't help yelling, then said "I've been meaning to try out this one, but I thought it would be awkward with - uh, Cynder, where are you?"

**Spring Big Bang Trigger Happy is a genuine Swap Force variant. Look it up online if you don't believe me. Seraph of Enigma, the Disney Infinity thing was a one-off and probably won't happen again, but it does provide Magic Items - of a fashion. I can't be bothered going into detail, look it up for yourself. Plus, I never said the bringing things from video game to Skylands was limited to Disney Infinity.**

**Bladedninja, the only OCs I am having in this story are Tails, Darkus, Ajay and Maya. At least for the first two seasons. And as far as this story goes, Flashwing and Jade aren't part of their own species, they're hybrids like Whirlwind, or Sunburn, or Camo. Who are Ajay and Maya? You'll find out. Eventually.**

**Oh, and one more thing: I've got a plan for a really awesome way to have the figha with Kaos' mother and Darkus at the end - but I'm not going to tell you. I'll just give you this clue: First Half of New Vestroia.**

**Term starts again for me today, so my writing time and thus my update rate is going to be cut back. Peace!**


	13. Rescues and Reliefs

Ch. 13: Rescues and Reliefs

Tails looked around, but couldn't make head or tail of what he was seeing. "Blasted visor," and he switched to Camo. "Fruit Punch!" Having said Camo's catchphrase, he looked around again. "Okay. It appears that someone attacked Cynder, incapacitated her and carried her off in that direction. These people are really bad at covering their tracks," Tails thought out loud, then carefully started following the trail.

Using a couple of stealth techniques he had picked up from various books and absent-mindedly swishing his leafy tail behind him, Tails crept through the forest just to the side of the path. That was another reason he had chosen Camo, so that his leaf-like green scales would offer a degree of camouflage in the shrubbery around the base of the trees. He just had to remember to keep his horn-adorned head down so that nobody would notice his multiple yellow horns.

On a more absent-minded, metacognitive level, Tails was amazed at how easily he had slipped into the mindset of a Skylander - and a dragon. True, he had never really felt comfortable being human, and he wasn't sure whether that was weird or not, but still, he was impressed with himself.

Tails snuck through the undergrowth, taking advantage of his enhanced dragonoid senses to consistently check for anyone around him. Following the path, he eventually came to a large clearing. And had to prevent himself from gasping in shock.

Hundreds of the mutant things that had attacked the other five Skylanders were lying on the ground to worship - that was the tough part. It was shrouded in Darkness not dissimilar to the type he had beaten out of Blast Zone as Sonic Boom just yesterday, but this type was completely opaque, whereas the type he had seen before was more translucent. But, most scarily, the other five Skylanders were lying dazed in metal cages near the figure shrouded in Darkness.

Moving away so nobody would notice it, Tails switched to Drobot again, then moved back and took a few scans with his headgear. "Okay, there is only one Skylander that can remove a cloud like that and come out relatively unharmed - Warnado,"

Moving away again, he switched to Warnado. "For the Wind!" One catchphrase later, he was feeling dizzy, which was very strange because he hadn't been spinning yet. Then he remembered Warnado's bio, which had closed with 'Now, he only gets dizzy when he's standing still,'.

Tails pulled his sky-blue limbs into his spiky, cerulean blue shell and started spinning, relying on Warnado's avatar programming to generate the tornado. It worked, and, despite his head being inside his shell, Tails had a strange feeling of being able to see in every direction at once. It was disconcerting for a few moments before he got the hang of it. Another example of how surprisingly well he could adapt to the various forms of non-humanoid Skylanders.

The Mini-Warnados Tails had gotten the avatar with an upgrade launched themselves out of the side of his shell, but Tails wasn't interested in them. He began spinning faster, aware through his odd omni-directional perspective that his tornado was getting bigger. Soon, it was as large as a small mountain. Tails judged that to be big enough, and started, er, twisting his way towards the camp.

Many of the various things scattered upon seeing the tornado. Those that didn't were sucked into it's swirling torrent. Tails, having no interest in them, launched them out of the top of the twister, where they crashed all over the island. Soon Tails was close enough to suck the Darkness into his tornado. But that had an unexpected side effect.

The Darkness started swirling around at the bottom of the tornado, gradually building up. Tails knew that if he let it get high enough, it would take control of the tornado and possibly him too, so he span his way out of the tornado and let it dissipate into nothingness - and the Darkness with it. Giving him a good look at the figure that it had been hiding.

It looked rather like Rider wearing a farmer's outfit - except that in his chest was a massive purple crystal, with the tendrils of darkness that Stealth Elf had seen earlier (which were now visible) coming out of it and spreading every which way all over the island. Tails landed, shouted "Blinded by the Light!" as he switched back to Jade Flashwing, turned the leftover rotational force from Warnado into a supercharged spin and thus formed a supercharged crystalline lighthouse - which instantly blasted the crystal in the elf's chest straight out of his body.

It shattered like glass under Crusher's hammer.

With that, the tendrils of darkness speedily retracted into the fragments, which winked out of existence. And once that had happened, the energy cages around the five Skylanders disappeared and a ghost appeared from the corpse of the elf whose body the crystal had been in. "Thank you for releasing me, and for freeing my kin of our curse,"

And with that, he swirled up and dissipated into the atmosphere.

Tails reactivated the lighthouse and let it's healing emerald light shine on his friends, who woke up after a couple of minutes.

"Uuuuhhh, what happened?" Stealth Elf asked, shaking her head to clear it of sleep. Cynder recognised the dragon in front of her and smiled. "Jade again?"

Tails shrugged. Or as much as he could shrug without shoulders. "I dunno, there's just something about this form that really clicks with me," And he proceeded to sum everything he had done. "Now come on, let's get out of this place,"

"I thought we needed to fix the ship?" Trigger Happy asked, confused.

"That thing could still fly if it's entire hull was torn apart. I just thought it would look bad if we were flying a ship with a giant hole in it. But seriously, let's go, this place is freaking me out,"

Trigger Happy, Stealth Elf and Sunburn each complimented Tails on how well he had performed under pressure, then started walking and chatting. Drobot stalked ahead in infuriated silence. Tails and Cynder hung back, Cynder joking to Tails that Sunburn, Stealth and Trigg were probably talking about who he was likely to date.

"Hey, is Drobot always like that?" Tails asked, indicating the cyber dragon several paces ahead of him with the end crystal on his wing.

"No, I've never seen him like this. He's always been somewhat reserved, and a bit of a sociopath, and kind of obsessive about being the best no matter what, but I've never seen him like this. It's almost like he's jealous,"

"Jealous? Of me?" Tails couldn't help but smile. But Cynder was deadpanning it.

"Of course. Think about it. He hasn't had an intellectual rival since he left his home up in the Misty Mountain Peaks. Since joining the Skylanders, he's been renowned as the smartest Skylander for the last five years. It's the only really impressive thing he's ever been able to say about himself. And now you've come in here and threatened that,"

Tails frowned. "How do you even know that?"

Cynder couldn't help but smile mischievously. "Whirlwind. She, Drobot and Polarus grew up together, and nobody ever notices me when I hide in the shadows. There's a lot of things I've learnt that way that most people don't know I know. For example -"

"I'm sure I'd love to hear all about it, Cynder, but I should probably straighten things out with Drobot,"

"Good luck!" Cynder called after him, watching the emerald-studded dragon (ess, nobody was really sure whether to count Tails as male or female when he took the form of a female Skylander) run forwards to catch up with Drobot.

**I know, I know, this chapter is short, even by my standards, but I got some really bad writer's block as I was trying to work out how Tails confronting Drobot should go and I didn't see any reason to hoscout on everyone with this section. Plus, I'm feeling inspired to follow Numbuh 94's trail with 'Snow Quest' and 'The Most Frightening of Rides' and write a spin-off of Drobot's history. **

**Besides, the next chapter will really depend on what I find to be the hub in Skylanders Swap Force, so while I'm waiting for that I might as well write 'A Technical Tail'. Keep an eye out for it!**


	14. History

Ch. 14: History  
Tails had confronted Drobot about his dislike of him, but Drobot had found an excuse to avoid it in that he had to fly onto the ship. Tails, not one to let such a thing dissuade him, took a moment to switch back to Pop Thorn, then inflated himself and followed him up. By which point Drobot had hidden below decks, and, even though it was technically his ship, Tails had no idea that it even had a 'below decks' and so lost him.

Bash, Chill, Hoot Loop and Tails, now back as Camo, were working on fixing the hole in the ship. Hoot Loop was teleporting in steel girders and stuff, as he so aptly described it, Bash was strengthening and holding them together with various specialised rock formations, Chill was encrusting the gaps with ice, forming some rather nice windows, and Tails was spreading his vines throughout the whole structure, reinforcing it tenfold. Blast Zone had taken the helm, and according to the GPS Tails had pulled out of some Skylander-related video game or other about events that had happened a year ago which Blast Zone couldn't be bothered to recall anything about, they were nearing the Cloudbreak Isles. With a week and a half to spare.

The new appearance of the hull gave the ship an interesting look of half broken old pirate ship, half swanky ocean liner.

"Hey, just out of curiosity, are things always this easy?" Tails, still in Camo's guise, asked Cynder. "No, we usually get attacked by ghost pirates or Arkeyans or something or other at this point. But we've been sailing peacefully for the last day, and nobody's being unduly mean to me. It's very disconcerting," Tails took a moment to think about his new friend's statement, and realised it meant that she was uncomfortable because she was at peace, and realised that that meant Cynder had had a seriously messed-up life. Realising that his multiple thorn-like horns were uncomfortably weighing him down, he switched out of Camo and back to Polar Whirlwind. There was something soothing about that white, feathered, female body that Tails really enjoyed.

He hoped that the fact that Polarus was male, but his avatar was female and almost every other Skylander had their gender represented correctly in their avatar wouldn't cause any problems with a potential friendship with him.

"Blast Zone, how long until we reach Cloudbreak?" Bash asked, for lack of anything better to do.  
"About five seconds until we're in the Cloudbreak region. As for an actual island we can dock at safely, well, let's just say I hope the inhabitants of Motleyville remember that time me and the other fifteen Swap Force Skylanders saved us from that giant robot crab a hundred years ago," the fire knight replied.

Tails pricked up his ears, which, considering the long, rabbit-like ears attributed to unicorn-dragon hybrids like he currently was, was quite an impressive feat. "Robot crab?"  
"Yes, a grey crab who tried to take over Motleyville a hundred years ago. He was in league with Linagarnix, an evil Portal Master who attempted to corrupt the Cloudbreak Volcano a hundred years ago. Me, Hoot, Boom, or Boom Jet as most know him, and Rattle Shake went there to ask Colonel Sharpfin Eartheater the Second for directions to the Terrasquid, one of the four Elementals who cause the volcano to erupt every hundred years. Linagarnix was trying to corrupt the Elementals to evilise the volcano's eruption. You know, I believe she is the mother of this Kaos guy who keeps attacking Skylands. What's that look on your face for?"

"That is almost exactly the plot line of the third Skylanders game, Swap Force. Tell me, in the end, did you trap Linagarnix in a mirror?"

"How did you know that? Strangely, that should have been the end of it, but apparently a battalion of her minions escaped and attacked us just as the volcano was erupting. Not sure what they were trying to achieve, but even as we defeated them on the lip of the volcano, we got sucked into the eruption, and, well, you know the rest,"

"Intriguing! If the events of the video game up till the 'Motherly Mayhem' boss battle happened a hundred years ago, then, what happened to the Cloudbreak Core boss battle with the giant Kaos? Wait, if that hasn't happened yet, but everything else has, then when the volcano erupts, Kaos is going to attempt that and get transformed, just like the video game, and - Great Scott! And I sound like that professor from Back to the Future. And the Skylanders are good, but this isn't a game, and I don't think they're that good. Meaning that I'm going to have to make alternate preparations for that battle - but how? Hey, I've got a week and a half. It'll come to me,"

Tails' thoughts were interrupted by a shout from Free Ranger of 'Incoming!"

Free Ranger was on lookout up in the ship's crow's nest. He was a bird, after all, and birds were supposed to have good eyesight. Unfortunately, chickens seemed to be the only exception to this.

And Free Ranger was a chicken in almost every way. How the heck he got a Legendary Statue, nobody knew.

"Wha t'is it?" Chill shouted up at him, her abnormal accent blurring the two words together in her frustration. "I don't know, but it's headed towards me, and I don't want to get hit by it!" And with that, Free Ranger formed his tornado and flew down, panicking. "I thought 'incoming' meant something was about to hit," Sunburn pointed out, "not that you could see something in the distance,"

"And I thought dragons were supposed to be smart, but you're just a pathetic representation of a dying race," If there was one thing Free Ranger was good at, it was acting without thinking. He had forgotten that, other than Sunburn, there were three, four counting Tails, who was quite happy to count himself as one, other dragons on board the ship. And all five, as Drobot had appeared out of what seemed to be absolutely nowhere, had come over when they heard this and ganged up on the chicken.

It was quite literally the first time Cynder and Drobot, or Bash for that matter, had agreed on something. Ever. Nobody other than Spyro, Tails, and some of the other Undead Skylanders trusted her, so it was unusual standing beside them. It was possible that Drobot's past experiences with Undead dragons (see 'A Technical Tail') had put him off them, but he would not allow insults to dragons pass. Even if he was being backed up by her.

Tails was perhaps getting a bit too deep into the mindset of the various dragons he was consistently taking the forms of, and it felt surprisingly natural to count himself as a dragon at this point. As he realised this, he also realised that most people would probably be worried about this, but he wasn't, because he enjoyed being a dragon, and it felt so much more natural and, well, right than being human ever had. Which should be worrying in itself, but once again, wasn't. He absent-mindedly rubbed the golden unicorn horn that currently protruded from his forehead with his front paw as he thought. 'And the fact that that is a normal statement now just shows how messed-up my life has become in the last thirty hours,' he added to his train of thought.

Lightning and fire crackled through the small gaps in Cynder and Sunburn's jaws, the tip of Tails' horn glimmered with all kinds of colours, and the crystal eye-liners Drobot used to create his lasers started to glow. Bash lowered his head and pointed his triceratops-like bronze horns at Free Ranger. "Don't ever insult dragons," he growled at the storm chicken. Free Ranger, backing up, swapped with Blast Zone into Free Zone, and rocketed away from the dragons. The five dragonoids and Blast Ranger, as he now had the bottom half of Free Ranger, watched him soar back up to the cockpit - where the incoming object that everyone had somehow forgotten about, narrowly missed him.

It was a large dragon that seemed to be not quite an adult, but nearing it. It was black and red, and it's tail-tip was on fire. It's horns were bone-white, and there was something about it that was oddly familiar to Drobot.

Dragons generally reached adult size at the age of thirty. Considering most dragons lived to four or five thousand, it was a strange evolutionary blip that they reached such a size at such speed. Of course, when they reached a couple of thousand years old, they were the size of an average Skyland, but such early growth was still surprising.

"Well, I assume these are the Skylanders that mum sent me to destroy. Yah don't look like much,"

"That is exactly what a stereotypical villain would proclaim, only a matter of minutes before, as my friend Polarus would say, the Skylanders totally kick their butt," Drobot boomed up at the dragon, who was hovering above the ship.

"Shut it, punk! I am - well, well, well, if it isn't my old friend Potestatem. Did you miss me? I'm going to enjoy tearing you to shreds all over again, roboy. And this time, I'll make sure you can't build yourself robotic replacement limbs - because you won't have any to start with!" Behind his metal face-plate, Drobot's eyelid was twitching. His laser software was going crazy.

"Arkor, charge all stored laser energy into a bladegear, load the bladegear into slot designated tail-launcher and tell me when it is ready," he whispered into his suit. "Affirmative, Activator-Potestatem. Beginning process now,"

"What happened to Cogshine, Insidae and Burn? Did they finally recognise you as pure evil and abandon you?" he taunted in the meantime.

"For your information, Cogshine and Burn remain my closest friends. Insidae died to save my life," Shadeblazer replied. Drobot frowned, and instructed Arkor, who he had built into his suit, to run vocal analysis on her last statement and determine if she was lying. He replied that his software told him that she believed she was telling the truth, and if she was incorrect, she was ignorant of the fact that she was so.

"Really. Insidae, sacrificed herself to save you? We're talking about the same Insidae here, right?" Drobot absent-mindedly noticed that Tails had disappeared. He had probably gone to get some kind of weapon from some video game or other to deter Shadeblazer from attacking. Whirlwind, Polarus, and Camo would be devastated. They had really believed in Insidae's wish to do good, rather than evil, and the female Life dragon was Camo's long-lost sister.

"Shut it, punk!" the dragon roared at him. The truth of the matter was, the four of them had happened on a mysterious giant geode, partially amethyst, partially jade. Cogshine thought it could be powerful, but also dangerous, so Shadeblazer naturally ordered Insidae to touch it first. And it was a good thing she did. The crystal sucked the dragon inside it, before blasting off into a reach of Skylands Shadeblazer couldn't see. She had never seen Insidae or the crystal again, but, misjudging Insidae's loyalty to her, or lack of it, she assumed that if Insidae had survived, she would have returned to her, so she naturally thought the Life dragon was dead.

She swooped, and her sharpened wing ribbing appeared, slicing the mast in half. The wind caught the sail that had previously been furled, it pulled the ship in the wrong direction, and the craft sped away from Shadeblazer at full speed. "Blast Ranger, please tell me you can stop this thing!" Stealth Elf hollered from the prow, where she had dug her daggers into the wood of the ship.

"Sorry, Stealth, the tiller's broken!" Blast Ranger shouted back at the elven ninja.

"Don't - call - me - Steeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaalth!" she screamed back at him, which turned into a scream of fear as the ship barrelled towards a large, forested Skyland that appeared to have a large village built literally in the trees. Shadeblazer watched, decided that when they crashed, there was no way they could survive, and a couple of dozen innocent lives would be lost too, as a bit of a bonus. She turned and flew away.

**Ooh, Shadeblazer's first appearance in 'The Dragon Chronicles'. And a fairly decent cliffhanger. I did say in the newest chapter of 'A Technical Tail' that Insidae would escape Shadeblazer at some point, and that has been mentioned here. I intend to go into more detail as to Insidae's disappearance in a later chapter of 'A Technical Tail'. And what do you know, the spoiler that I was so worried about didn't even show up in this chapter. It still will, of course, but later. As a matter of fact, I think Insidae's fate will surprise everyone. When it's revealed, at some point or other. Of course, that could take a while, so let the speculation begin! Peace!**

**Oh, and I almost forgot, did everyone see the new cover image? Well, that's the official cover of 'The Dragon Chronicles', and a hinter towards the second part of the trilogy. Now, for real this time, Peace!**


	15. The Forest of Clouds

Ch. 15: The Forest of Clouds  
Stealth Elf continued to scream as the ship ploughed towards the woods. What she didn't expect was a giant net of vines that seemed to appear out of nowhere, to catch the ship and stop it's flight. Tails reappeared on deck, back as Jade Flashwing, with a large white-and-beige artillery piece that had somehow mounted itself on deck. The rich, silky, melodious tone he possessed as either of the Flashwings did a surprisingly good job of sounding threatening. "Blinded by the Light! You'd better leave now, before I . . . . wait, where's the giant evil dragon? Hey, I think I'm finally used to this voice,"

"While you were gone," Drobot boomed pointedly through his vocal mask, "Shadeblazer destroyed our rigging and sent us flying into this giant net in the forest. Thank the Ancients it was there, or I hate to think what might have happened,"

Tails frowned, which really wasn't saying much on Jade Flashwing's glimmering, green-tinged angular head. "How do you know her name?"

Drobot made a fist with one front paw and pounded it into the other. "I have her to thank for needing this," he explained, waving a paw in the general direction of his suit. "Huh?"

Drobot sighed. "Arkor: eject," he ordered his suit's A.I., and his metal tail unclenched and fell to the deck, his helmet opened up and fell off like the head of an Arkeyan Conquertron, his blue-and-orange metallic wings detached from the power core on his back and fell off, and the power core's harness detached and launched itself into the air, where Drobot effortlessly caught it in his front right paw. Tails couldn't help but stare.

The back of Drobot's head was covered in crusted bloody scabs, as was most of the end of his tail. He had very few teeth remaining, which explained why there were artificial teeth built into the jaws of his mask, but the real eyesore was the wings. Or what was left of them. There was about three feet of bone, only partially covered in Drobot's green, scaly skin, and bone protruded in multiple areas, with rather patchy wing membrane attached, and almost completely crusted over with blood. Even as Tails and the other Skylanders, who had evidently not seen this before, watched, the scabs began to fall away and blood started seeping out. "That is really injuring me. Arkor, return the suit to my body immediately,"

The suit literally put itself back on the mutilated dragon. Tails was impressed, as he was the only person there, other than Drobot himself, who understood the computing power this took. "Shadeblazer caused this mutilation of my body. Thanks to her, this suit is all that's holding my body together after what she did to me. Without it, I would die in a matter of hours. Until this hour, I expected that she was dead, killed in an explosion six point five years ago. And if I ever get the opportunity, I am going to make her pay for doing this to me. Why do you have that look on your face, Tails?"

The green-tinged brow embedded with a hexagonal jade crystal Tails possessed as Jade Flashwing was furrowed in concentration, and his surprisingly human eyes were narrowed. "Huh? Oh, sorry, it's just that I'm sure I've read, or seen, something recently pertaining to your, body problems, that might be able to restore your body to it's natural state. It'll come to me, I'm sure. Now, how about we work out exactly where we've landed?"

"Oh, I highly doubt you'll ever leave the ship alive," a mocking drawl sounded from the trees above. The assembled Skylanders looked up. Somehow, Evilised Roller Brawl and Fryno were perched on a couple of strong branches above the crashed ship. Roller Brawl actually didn't look that different, the only notable differences were that her roller-blades were crystalline, and there was a large crystal protruding from her helmet. Fryno was also not that different, his skin had just turned a light purple - and was glowing - and the solitary, unicorn-like horn on his head was crystalline.

Chill looked at them, then over at the large artillery piece Tails had abandoned on the deck. "Being evilised really t'oesn't t'o any favours to a being's intelligence, t'oes 't?" the ice warrior commented to Bash, who until recently had been on top of her, before moving towards the massive gun. "If anything, I think it makes them dumber," the earth dragon replied. "I expect this behaviour from Fryno, but Roller Brawl is normally more level-headed than to challenge a dozen Skylanders and a cannon this size together," he added. Bash had been the one to recruit Fryno, so he knew what he was like.

Chill took a moment to aim, then fired a massive ball of lead straight at the two evilised Skylanders. It hit them head-on, and they fell to the deck, instantly de-evilised. Tails looked over and smiled. "Not quite what I expected to use that for, but who cares? Shadeblazer's gone, and we have two more Skylanders to help us!"

Cynder rushed over to take care of Roller Brawl, as the young vampire was one of the only people she had ever met who had given her a chance at friendship, and she deeply cared about her. Meanwhile, Fryno's hot-headedness had resulted in not many Skylanders being able to count him as a friend. But Stealth Elf was one of the few that could, perhaps because she was a loner in similar ways. and went to help him.

Fryno woke up after a couple of minutes. "HUH? WHAT? WHAT IN THE LAVA LAKES HAPPENED TO ME?! ANSWER ME NOW, STEALTH ELF! NOW! NOW NOW!"

"That guy has a normal voice, right?" Tails asked Bash, who was standing nearby, with a questioning look on his long, triangular, beak-like muzzle.

In a single bound, Fryno leapt over, grabbed Tails by the golden wing muscles and shook him. Hard. "THIS IS MY NORMAL VOICE! YA GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT, KID?"

Bash shook his head. "Nope,"

Rubble Rouser and Bash managed to restrain Fryno. Blast Zone took charge, perhaps unsurprisingly, as he was Wash Buckler's second-in-command.

Wash Buckler was in charge of the Swap Force, which made him one of the four big leaders. The other three were Spyro, Jet-Vac and Tree Rex. Spyro was in charge of the 'figure-Cores', as the thirty-five (Polarus, Vulcan [Volcanic Eruptor] and Roydrit [Royal Double Trouble] had joined at this time, but Spring hadn't) Skylanders who had been trapped on Earth three years ago were commonly known, and Gill Grunt was his second-in-command, Tree Rex was leader of the Giants, and Bouncer was his second-in-command, Wash Buckler was in charge of the Swap Force, and Blast Zone was his second-in-command, and finally Jet-Vac was commander of the 'Sky-Cores', as the thirty-one Cores - and the only Skylanders currently in the ranks - who had never been to Earth were generally known, with Chill as his second-in-command. Shroomboom had declined the position, and everyone agreed Pop Fizz was too insane to take any role of leadership.

Blast Zone detailed the two Earth Skylanders to keep an eye on Fryno, and instructed Cynder and Tails, since he was the only one present and conscious that could stand to be with Cynder for long periods of time, plus as Jade Flashwing his crystals had healing properties, to take care of Roller Brawl, and paired off the other Skylanders to look around and see if there was anyone on the island. Hoot Loop and Free Ranger worked surprisingly well together, especially as Free Loop, so the two birds took flight into the higher reaches of the trees, Stealth Elf went with Chill, as the two elfin girls were known to get along well, and vanished into the undergrowth, and finally Sunburn partnered up with Drobot again and both dragonoids took off.

Stealth Elf drew up short at a very strange phenomenon: an absolute maze of hollow roots, twisted and knotted in such a complicated manner that even she, with her bird-like vision, couldn't tell which led where. And an examination of one of the three openings proved that the interior of the roots was so slippery that entering one would mean there was no way out until you reached the far end of it, wherever that was.

"Whit'h one do you t'ink we should take, Steal't El't?" Chill asked, recognising that this was the other elf's area of expertise and that she had no part in it.

Chill was strange in herself, for she hailed from a species that was very hard to find, if it existed, and had no name. Most believed that they were hybrids between the Frost Elves, like the ones that inhabited the regions of the Northern Point of the Cloudbreak Isles, like Winter's Keep and Boney Islands, and Runts. Chill had never known her parents, and the only thing that set her apart from the Frost Elves she used to work with, guarding the Snow Princess, was her peculiar human-like skin tone. There had even been rumours that Chill had human blood, but, as they said, she had put them on ice.

This had resulted in her being, well, frosty. Plus she had a habit of overreacting. The first time she had met Stealth Elf, the Life Skylander had studiously ignored her because she was training. Chill had eventually grown tired and frozen the other Skylander solid. It was a stroke of luck Eruptor had been on hand to melt her.

"I've never seen anything like this before. I . . . . . . don't know,"

"So how t'o we tell wit'h pat' to take?"

Stealth Elf suddenly spotted something inscribed in the floor. "Look at this," both elves crouched down to take a look at the strange inscriptions. "It appears t'o be a strange t'ipe of t'ialect," Chill commented. A closer examination revealed that there were such markings at the floor of all three tunnels. "Maybe we should split up," Stealth Elf suggested.

A currently unseen character watched the two elfin Skylanders and chortled. "You two have no idea what you're doing, do you?" she called. Stealth Elf and Chill, each of which were about to take one of the passages, stopped and looked over at the bundle of leaves that was hiding the unseen viewer.

Stealth Elf decided that her pride couldn't take this insult. "I will have you know that I have spent my life training as a forest ninja and a master of the woods," This just seemed to crack up the unseen viewer even more. "Right, because a 'master of the woods' would willingly slide through a root that would drop you off the edge of the Skyland,"

Stealth Elf drew her daggers and started advancing on the bushes concealing the newcomer. "And who exactly are you?"

"Someone who has just decided it's time for her to go. Bye!" And with that, a giant red bird burst out of the bushes and took off. "Is t'at a giant chicken?" Chill gasped.  
"Not on my watch you aren't!" Stealth Elf declared, and with an astonishing leap, she grabbed hold of the bird's tailfeathers and got her first glimpse of it's rider.

Stealth Elf remembered Scott once mentioning a type of animal native to Earth known as a fox, and he had done a pretty good job of describing it. Well, this person looked like an anthropomorphic fox with elven hair, which was coloured a mild auburn. She was dressed in clothes that appeared to be made entirely out of leaves, which Stealth Elf couldn't decide whether she liked or not, and had considerable skill flying the bird, despite the elf clinging to it's tail.

"What was that?" The fox-girl turned around and spotted the Skylander. "Speed up, Whiskers, we've gotta lose her before we can return to Woodburrow!"

"You are aware that I can hear you, right?" Stealth Elf pointed out.

Drobot and Sunburn were soaring through the trees, when a noise just at the edge of Sunburn's hearing got his attention. "What was that?"

"What was what?" Drobot asked the hybrid.

"Oh, probably nothing. It's just that I could swear I just heard a - GIANT CHICKEN!" Sunburn shrieked and teleported out of the way as the massive bird careened through the space he had occupied barely a second before.

Drobot turned and watched the bird fly away. "Was that Stealth Elf?"

"That was very strange," Sunburn commented.

"We should probably go after them," Drobot decided, and activated his afterburners. Sunburn Phoenix Dashed, and the two dragonoids were chasing the giant chicken. Until Chill, riding an ice snowboard along a path of ice she was constantly creating, passed by them. "Have t'ou seen Steal't El't?"

"Yeah, she just passed us on a giant chicken," Sunburn told the other Skylander.

"I hope she shares the chicken, I wanna ride on a giant chicken," Sunburn told Drobot, who face-palmed in mid-air.

"Sunburn, you're practically a giant chicken yourself,"

"Maybe, but I wanna ride one,"

It was a very strange sight that passed the six conscious Skylanders on the ruined ship that afternoon. Stealth Elf was wrestling with an anthropomorphic fox with great hair on the back of a giant chicken, with Chill doing what from their perspective appeared to be an impersonation of The Green Lantern in pursuit, and Sunburn and Drobot flying behind and arguing about why Sunburn would want to ride a giant chicken.

Tails decided it would be a good idea to always carry a camera from then on.

The giant chicken landed on the deck of the ship and the wrestlers fell off, the fox-girl landing a lucky shot to Stealth Elf's temples and knocking her unconscious.

Sunburn and Drobot landed on the deck, and Chill evaporated her ice surfboard, and, with a tuck-and-roll manoeuvre, landed on the deck without a scratch.

Chill approached the fox-girl. "Who are you?"

"Tessa. Tessa Cloudstone. And you are - wait, I recognise you!" Tessa pointed at Blast Zone. "You're Blast Zone, one of the sixteen Skylanders who gave their lives to save Cloudbreak a hundred years ago! But, shouldn't you be dead?"

"Common misconception. The volcano didn't kill us, it just banished us to Earth. You should really talk to Magna Charge or Boom Jet, they're the only ones of the Swap Force that really understand it,"

"So, are you all Skylanders?" (Tessa)

"Yep, well, except for him, he's more of an initiate," Rubble Rouser indicated Tails.

"But that's a girl," Tessa pointed out.

"It's complicated," Tails told her. "Wait, did you say your name was Tessa?"

"Yeah, why?" (Tessa)

"You were a really important character in the third Skylanders game, Swap Force," (Tails)

"The what?" (Tessa)

"Like I said, it's complicated," (Tails)

Suddenly, the ship gave an almighty lurch. "Maybe we should discuss this back at Woodburrow," Tessa suggested.

**Oh, it is going to be so much fun to write Fryno. And Tessa, one of my fave NPCs ever, has arrived. What can I say about her introduction, Wreck-It-Ralph was on my mind. And please, review!**

**About constantly referring to Whiskers as a giant chicken, it's a play on the opening scene of Skylanders: Swap Force. Flynn: "Weird, I could swear I just heard a GIANT CHICKEN!" Since Flynn's probably still splashing around in the docks at the Core of Light, I can't really do that here, so I made do with what I had. The hollow vines will be important later.**

**Oh, and I almost forgot: as the game always refers to Kaos' mother as Kaos' mother, and it never tells us her actual name, I made up my own: Linagarnix.**


	16. Homes and Friends, Old and New

Ch. 16: Homes and Friends, Old and New

Spyro gasped as he walked out of the enchanted mineshaft on the Isle of Light. Everything was so different. "How long have I been gone?"

"Two days, my friend," a grave voice came from the top of the hill.

"Night Shift?" Spyro questioned, as the vampire boxer wafted down the rails to where the purple dragon was standing. "What happened?"

"Linagarnix evilised the whole place," Night Shift explained, briefly. He was that sort of person, Spyro reflected. In the couple of weeks since the Swap Force had returned, Night Shift had never spoken a word more than was necessary. A sentence with more than fifteen words from him was rarer than Sunburn's kin - only one had ever been found.

"Is anyone else around?"

"No. I'm the only survivor I know of,"

Then a splashing noise came from the beach nearby and Flynn struggled out, dripping with the pink goop the water at the docks had transformed into. "Flynn?"

"In the flesh. Did I mention I can't swim? This is why I drive flying vehicles. And I was due for a vacation next week. I was gonna go see the Cloudbreak Volcano erupt. I even got this awesome hat and everything. The best hat in all of Skylands for the best pilot in all of Skylands. Boom!"

"But, how did you avoid being, er," (Spyro)

"Evilised?" Night Shift put in.

"Thank you," (Spyro)

"Apparently my awesomeness makes me immune to, er, whatever thingamajig the vampire just said. Boom!" Spyro honestly believed that there were only three words with more than two syllables in Flynn's vocabulary: 'awesomeness', 'thingamajig', and 'whatjimacallit'. Then he added 'apparently' to that list.

"Well, that's definitely not it, but that's also not important. We need to find some of the other Skylanders, especially Cynder," (Spyro)

"I take it you have more luck with the ladies than I do. Shame that I never found the right gal, but she's out there! I can feel it in my awesomeness! Boom!" Flynn proclaimed, clutching a hand to his rather large belly at the last sentence, for what seemed to be no reason at all.

Spyro facepalmed, and realised why Cali disliked the pilot so much. Anyway, annoying or no, Flynn was as much part of the Skylander forces as he was, sort of, so as much as people often wanted to dump the self-centered, narcissistic, somewhat delusional pilot in the bottom of the Chocolate Ocean, they all put up with him.

"Luckily I stashed my old balloon, wow, haven't used that thing in two and a half years, underneath the bridge to the Cyclops castle placeamajig, so we should be able to use it to get where we want to go. Speaking of that, where exactly is where we want to go?"

Spyro thought, but it was Night Shift who answered. "Cloudbreak. The Cloudbreak Volcano is going to erupt next week, and any Skylanders who escaped evilisation would go there, to help protect the Volcano from a repeat of last century,"

"Alright, Skywhatsits, help me get the old girl out from the bridge and we can be moving to this Cloudsnap place. I sure hope you know the way, though, because the navigational equipment was on the Dread-Yacht, and that's gone missing. Wonder what took it?" Spyro facepalmed again and moved towards the bridge.

More than one of the eleven Skylanders, Roller Brawl having regained consciousness on the way to Woodburrow and Hoot Loop and Free Ranger being nowhere in sight, gasped as they walked through the gates to the tree village. Tails, who had returned to Polar Whirlwind's avatar during the course of his explanation of his abilities to Tessa as demonstration, did his best to whistle. "This is not what this place looked like in the game,"

Which was not strictly true. Large parts of the area were like they had been in the game after every story level had been completed, but there were differences. Snagglescale's tent was larger, Tuk's Emporium had become multi-storey, and several well-designed wooden houses lined the square and there was even one over by the Treasure Tree (the place where you learn about how Legendary Treasures work in-game). Then everyone gasped again as they spotted Hoot Loop and Free Ranger having tea with an elderly Fabbory.

"I see that my back-up has arrived. Welcome to the show," Hoot Loop proclaimed, brandishing his tea-cup.

When Tails and Drobot had expressed curiosity as to Tessa's species, she had told them they were widely known as Fabbories.

"I'm sorry that we don't have any spare accommodation for you, Skylanders," Tessa explained, but Tails held up a three-toed foreleg. "Don't worry, just give me a minute," and he vanished in a flash of white light. "Hey, wait, where's Trigger Happy?" asked, and everyone realised she was right. Nobody had seen the gremlin since they had left the Isle of Night.

Suddenly a great big palace appeared out of nowhere just off the training area, with all the dummies. Tails, still as Polar Whirlwind, walked out, dragging Trigger Happy by the arm. "Look who I found hiding in my lab. In other news, the Disney Palace is going to provide us with accommodation for as long as necessary," And he extended a wing and gestured at the cream-and-navy palace.

"So you can shape-shift, travel between dimensions at will, and create palaces out of thin air?" Roller Brawl asked disbelievingly. Tails smirked, which looked a bit weird on Polar Whirlwind's hooking, beak-like muzzle. "Gimme ten minutes, I'll give you a stunt-rink to die for,"

The vampire shrugged. "I already did die, but that sounds awesome!"

"We're going to need to find beds, and put them in there, but at least we don't have to build an entire house,"

"Oh, dun't worry about that," An elf with blue skin and black-and-brown armour, and a somewhat Russian, or perhaps Swedish that nobody could really place, had come up. "Good to see yer back, Tessa, and you brought some friends, too. Skylanders. Good to meet ya. Avril's the name, Avril of the Frost Elves. I'm the Ambassador of the North around here,"

The Cloudbreak Isles were split into four sections: Arctic North, where the Frost Elves and Ice Yetis lived, home to the Ancient Frosthound, Desert West, where the Dirt Sharks lived, home to the Ancient Terrasquid, Swampy East, where the Gillmen lived, home to the Ancient Flashfin, and Forest South, home to Fabbories, Ents and the Ancient Treespirit. In order to maintain peace, each quarter had three ambassadors, one for each of the other quarters. Avril was obviously Ambassador of the North to the South, just as Snagglescale was ambassador of the East to the South. The Ambassador of the West, however, was nowhere to be seen, Blast Zone reflected.

"I've gat plenty of building materials lying around. And - Chill, is that you?" Chill, who had just walked in through the gates, gasped, ran up to Avril and hugged her. "Avril? It's been so long, old friend,"

"Can ye let go? I can't breathe," Chill let go of her old friend, smiling like, well, Trigger Happy. "So this is where ye went after the Princess was captured. Ye joined the Skylanders! Sumbode came far in a matter of months,"

"And to top it'all awf, I got a Legendary Statue!" Chill exclaimed, her excitement slurring her words together. "Ye got a what? No way," Avril shook her head in disbelief. Tessa made as if to interrupt, but Roller Brawl pulled her back. "Don't, girlfriend. When she gets like this, there's no stopping her. We should let them catch up, and find out who it is Free Ranger and Hoot Loop are having tea with," Tessa flicked her tail in annoyance, but consented the point. "That would be my grandmother, Chieftess Cloudstone,"

"What's her first name?" Rubble Rouser asked innocently.

"I just told you. Chieftess. The first-born Cloudstone girl is always given the name Chieftess, because every first-born Cloudstone girl eventually becomes Chieftess of Woodburrow. But I always preferred people calling me Tess, or Tessa. My house is the one over there, just on the far side of the lane from the statue of the Ancient Flashfin,"

Tails and Cynder watched Tessa and Roller Brawl steadily hitting it off. "Something tells me those two are going to get along well," Cynder commented. Tails nodded in agreement. "I guess finding beds is going to have to wait," he added, gesturing back at Avril and Chill. "Was all this in your video game?" Cynder asked, half joking, half being serious. Tails shrugged. "Most of it. In the game, Avril and Chill weren't old friends, or whatever the deal is with those two, and there were far less houses around. And, of course, the Disney Palace wasn't over there, a portal to a place called the Tower of Time was," he gestured to the palace that had fallen out of the sky a moment ago.

The two dragonoids watched as the other eleven or so Skylanders made themselves at home in Woodburrow. Tails raised a white-furred brow. "Where the heck did Drobot get that tent?"

"It amazes me what that dragon can cram into that suit of his sometimes," Cynder offered by way of reply. "Well, I'm bored. You up for a quick trip to Rampart Ruins?"

Cynder frowned. "Where?"

"A really weird Arkeyan graveyard for robots. In the game, it was home to an archeological dig site for Petrified Darkness. Hopefully that's all been cleared out, though, so shall we take the next train to it?" Cynder nodded, and smiled.

"Wait, when you said train, did you mean an actual train, or was it another one of those Earth sayings?"

"Earth saying. I'll go get transportation, you go find somebody who can tell us the directions. Sound like a plan?"

Tails was young, he was cocky, he was brazen and there was a lot about him that reminded Cynder of Spyro seven years ago, when they were both only nine years old and trying to stop Malefor for the last time. Sure, he was almost five years older than Spyro had been at the time, but Cynder supposed that not being asked to save the world several times could have a real change on somebody's personality development. Or lack of it.

"Sure. There's gotta be a map around here somewhere,"

Kaos sniggered as he watched his mother shout at oh-so-precious Darkus and Shadeblazer for letting Spyro and those other Skylanders in Cloudbreak escape. "Who's laughing now?" the megalomaniacal Runt smirked to himself as he watched from a balcony set high into the wall. Then an uncomfortable thought crossed his mind. Where was Glumshanks? He hadn't seen the troll in a month, but had thought nothing of it until now. Indeed, with Linagarnix and her four dragons showing up, he hadn't had any time at all to consider his butler.

Then an uncomfortable thought crossed his mind. He knew his mother had a laboratory somewhere in the Western section of Cloudbreak Islands, and he knew that she had recently sent some things to it, but had refused to tell him what they were. Or, more to the point, who was supervising them. "Oh, if Glumshanks abandoned me to help at that laboratory of hers, he is going to regret it! As a matter of fact, I'll go there right now. I'm expecting a new batch of hair regrowth ointment anyway," And with that, he started strutting purposefully towards his castle's hangar.

**And this was awesome. Everybody should find the next chapter entertaining, and Glumshanks is the least of Kaos' problems. Just saying. All reviewers, thanks for being awesome, special thanks to JaneAndAnnaShenanigans and RexDragosaurus, Jane, keep being awesome, Rex, keep being absolutely insane, and all non-reviewers, your awesomeness is forfeit.**

**Nice work, Rex, you're rubbing off on me. And somebody has taken the first step towards deciding the clue I left a couple of chapters ago in a review. Congrats, Antex! I really can't be bothered typing out your name. Peace!**


	17. Six Dragons, a Runt and a History Lesson

Ch. 17: Six Dragons, a Runt and a History Lesson

"Tessa gave me a map," Cynder exclaimed triumphantly, brandishing a piece of parchment. "She's still absolutely nuts over the fact Skylanders have returned to Woodburrow, so she's basically doing anything we want. By the Ancients, where did you get that thing?"

Cynder had rendezvoused with Tails at the top of the hollow tree that made up the centre of Woodburrow and the meeting chamber of the elders. Somehow, there was a craft Cynder had never seen the likes of before mounted up there. It looked like a giant Arkeyan rocket with only one tailfin, and four massive wings rather like Drobot's, but completely flat and immobile. There were two per side, one on top of the other. The strangest thing was it seemed to be made entirely out of giant building blocks, similar to the type that some parents had recently been giving their children to play with.

"The Lego Indiana Jones video game. I'm pretty sure I left behind all the evil tribesmen minifigs though,"

"Is there anything you can't get out of some game or other?" Cynder asked, only half joking. Tails smiled, and in Sunburn's dusky tone, because he was currently in Sunburn's form, told the other dragon "I know a game that I can get a giant colossus made entirely out of ten-thousand-year-old temples powered by a set of magical multicoloured diamonds. Does that answer your question?"

"Do we even need this thing? We're both dragons, after all," Cynder queried the hybrid. Tails shrugged, as much as he could without shoulders. "I'm still learning how to fly, and I'd rather not take the chance. Besides, according to this map, it's a fairly long flight,"

Tails revved the Lego seaplane's engine, and took off into the sky above the Forest of Clouds.

Linagarnix looked down at her monitor in surprise. "Can it be? Two Skylanders - alone in Rampart Ruins? It appears that you two have a chance to redeem yourselves," She was talking to Darkus and Shadeblazer. "Really, mother? Please, let me destroy these Skylosers. I've been aching to feel blood in my claws again," Shadeblazer begged. "No! You two have failed me too many times recently for me to be able to trust you alone. So, I'm sending you both - and to make sure that you don't mess this up, I'm sending in a neutral third party to make sure you keep your minds on the job. You can come in now, my little genius! You two, I give you - Cogshine!"

A set of metal doors seemed to appear out of nowhere, which opened to reveal the dragon-sphinx hybrid. He had changed a bit in the last seven years. His silver feathers were a darker hue, but still as shiny as ever, his snake-like fangs gleamed white, and the fur covering most of his body was darker than it had been several years ago. His tail had doubled in length, and, oddly enough, it looked like he had been to a beauty salon because there were now purple streaks dyed along his back and tail, and some of the feathers in his wings were tinted the same shade of purple. This bi-coloured ensemble only proved to make him look even more menacing, and, like Shadeblazer, dark magic had clearly been used to speed up his growth, for he was ten feet long, three feet wide and had a wingspan of twenty-five feet.

"You're sending him! With us! What is wrong with you?" Shadeblazer questioned. Darkus, however, knew to keep his mouth shut. Linagarnix smacked Shadeblazer in the muzzle. "Never question my orders. Or it'll be the worse for your other friend," Fear shot into the Undead dragon's eyes. "Yes, mother,"

The three dragons departed without another word - from Darkus or Shadeblazer, anyway. Cogshine couldn't stop sniggering.

Cogshine had changed a lot in recent years, and for the worse, Shadeblazer reflected. His intelligence was scary, and he was constantly becoming more upstart to her - and yet her mother couldn't find one of his problems with a telescope! It was like he could do no wrong in their mother's eyes - because Linagarnix had adopted Cogshine too. Shadeblazer had lied when she said that Cogshine was still one of her best friends - these days, the two could barely stand each other. Darkus, however, seemed to get along with the hybrid just fine. They seemed to share a permanent cruel bloodlust.

Shadeblazer could respect bloodlust - she had experienced it herself countless times, and thoroughly enjoyed it every time - but for her, it always abated half an hour or so after the actual drawing of a victim's blood, leaving her with a perverse feeling of satisfaction that often lasted for days.

But Cogshine? For him, lately he could never accept a fight being over, could never accept that all the blood that could be spilled had been spilled. He always wanted more. His timetable consisted of eating, (mostly raw, bloody sheep) sleeping, inventing weapons of mass bloodspill, or tearing live beings to pieces. Shadeblazer had once asked him why he never did anything for fun. Cogshine had replied, as he tore open the chest of a captured Boghog from Cloudbreak, that this was fun.

Darkus had told Shadeblazer about the way that Linagarnix had infused his DNA with that of another being, Shadeblazer held suspicions that the same thing had happened to Cogshine - with primal vampire DNA.

There were two types of vampire in Skylands: primal and modern. Most vampires were modern, and, despite still having fangs, had lost the desire to drink blood. Roller Brawl was a good example. But primal vampires were more stereotypical - they could never get enough blood. Cogshine seemed to be like that recently, and Shadeblazer was worried. And Shadeblazer almost never got worried.

These were the thoughts going through Shadeblazer's mind on the way to Rampart Ruins.

Kaos grumbled to himself and his Evilised Greembble pilot as his mini-craft soared through the sky on the way to Cloudbreak. "Stupid dragons - stupid mother. Stupid Glumshanks for abandoning me like that. I always thought he disliked me - but why? I've always been as nice as is possible to my moronic, incompetent butler,"

"Maybe the fact that you call him things like 'moronic' and 'incompetent' is a big part of the reason he doesn't like you?" the Greebles pilot suggested.

"Shut up, minion. You're paid to fly the ship, not voice idiotic opinions," Kaos ordered, an ugly frown upon his uglier face. "Just saying, sir," the pilot replied.

"Well, don't say, then, you moron," Kaos instructed. The pilot engaged in some angry grumbling of his own as Kaos spotted an unusual-looking ship a kilometre away or so. "Pilot! Fly over to that ship and instruct them to prepare for boarding. I feel like terrorising a couple of civilians,"

Tails and Cynder were finding the flight quite pleasant. Tails had even managed to get his IPod into Skylands, somehow, and he had plugged it into the plane's speakers. They were enjoying some of Owl City's best hits when the music cut out and Kaos's voice started coming out of the speakers. "Attention, occupants of this craft! You are about to be boarded by the future Dark Emperor of Skylands! Be prepared to grovel in fear!" Tails, who had been clicking his beak in time to the music, complained "Hey! We were listening to Good Time!"

"Well, soon you're going to have a very bad time indeed," An evil laugh, typical of Kaos, came through the speakers before the connection cut out and Owl City started booming through the speakers once more. Tails and Cynder looked at each other. "That was Kaos, wasn't it?" (Tails)

"You bet. Let's kick his butt," (Cynder)

Kaos' craft pulled up and steadied itself alongside Tails' biplane. Tails, remembering that analogy from an old Sonic video game, had to stop himself from chuckling. Different Tails, different biplane, different world, different circumstances but the same analogy still applied.

A metal plank ejected itself from the side of the craft, and magnetised itself to the side of the plane. Kaos himself walked along it, proclaiming "It is I, Kaos, future emperor of Skylands! Bow down to my awesome presence!"

Then the two Skylanders popped up and revealed themselves to Kaos. "Y'now, if you play with fire, you get burnt," Tails, his fiery feathers smoking, told the tyrant.

"And if you mess with the Skylanders," Cynder added, as Tails swept one of his talons along the magnetic join, severing the connection and causing the plank to drop straight down, causing Kaos to fall onto the Skyland a couple of hundred metres or so, "THAT HAPPENS!" Both dragons chorused, watching over the side as Kaos disappeared into the body of an Arkeyan Robot. Kaos' jet fell away, it's pilot clearly having no lasting love for the tyrant.

"Let's land down there with more, conventional means, shall we?" Tails smiled again, which was kind of hard with a beak. Cynder smiled too. "Are you sure you never met Malefor?"

"So far, I haven't. And I have no intention of opening a portal into those video games,"

Tails landed the plane, with no small amount of bumps. "You stink at landing planes. But you're still better than Flynn," Cynder told him bluntly.

Tails conceded the point. "I'll take that as a compliment," The two dragonoids extended their wings and flew up to the top of a disembodied Arkeyan Robot head. "Speaking of family, is yours worried about you, you know, being in Skylands?" Tails looked nervous. "Actually, I haven't told them,"

Cynder frowned. "So you left them to worry about you for two days?"

Tails looked hurt. "No. What sort of jerk would deliberately do that? It's actually a strange time phenomenon. When I'm on Earth, time between Earth and Skylands moves equally. But when I'm in Skylands, time moves about sixty times as fast in Skylands as it does on Earth,"

"So, the two days that you've been here in Skylands, it's been less than an hour on Earth?" (Cynder)

"Just under. It certainly brooks further explanation, but that's for a later date," (Tails)

"How is your family, anyway?" Now Tails looked even more uncomfortable.

"My sister is really annoying. And my mother is ridiculously overprotective. Ever since my father . . . I don't like to talk about it,"

"Maybe you'll feel better if you do?" Cynder suggested. For, now, her curiosity was piqued. What was it about Tails' father? It sounded like an interesting tale.

"You're not going to give this up until I tell you, are you?" Tails asked the undead dragoness. Cynder couldn't help but grin. "Two days, and you already know me too well,"

Tails sighed. "My father is, or was, rather, a great inventor. My lab used to be his. The virtuality technology was all there, unfinished, missing some critical parts, but it was originally his design. Not mine. I still miss him,"

"But what happened to him?" Cynder couldn't help but ask.

"Six years ago, my father thought he had made a breakthrough in his work, and he called my mother up to come and see. Both me and my sister were at school. Anyway, something went wrong in his lab, and it exploded. My mother was pregnant at the time, and she survived the blast, but she lost the baby. Literally. No trace could be found of it anywhere in her," Tails explained.

"And your father?" Cynder asked, already knowing the answer.

"Vanished without a trace. He was completely disintegrated by the blast. No trace of him was ever found, not even a pile of ashes. And y'now what the strangest thing was?" (Tails)

"What?" (Cynder)

"There was a silver watch my father had given my mother as a gift many years ago. He had carved his initials into it: CA. She always wore it, but after the blast, it was nowhere to be found. She spent ages looking through the wreckage for it, but never found a trace of it," Tails finished.

"What a touching story," Shadeblazer sneered as she jumped out of her hiding place, followed by Cogshine and Darkus. "Shame you'll never get the chance to tell it again," Tails suddenly spotted something shiny on the small, silver-and-navy dragon standing in front of Shadeblazer and the other dragonoid. Something shiny and very familiar.

Cynder was no fool. She knew that her and Tails against two dragons who were practically adults and another dragon their own size was impossible odds. But Tails didn't seem to notice that as he Phoenix Dashed towards the three of them. Cynder grabbed hold of his tailfeathers and pulled him into a Shadow Dash back towards the plane. "What were you doing? Were you seeing red or something?"

Tails shook his head as they climbed back into the plane. "Not red. My father's watch. Somehow, that little black-and-silver dragon has it - and I want answers,"

Cynder looked back and replied "Well, you'll be searching for them in the afterlife if you don't get moving!" For the three evil dragons were approaching. Tails hastily started the engine.

Kaos regained consciousness inside the broken Arkeyan Robot chest. He fondly remembered the time that he had actually become the giant, all-powerful Robot Emperor of the Arkeyans. Until that traitorous blue-and-gold robot appeared and helped the Skylanders destroy him.

His reminiscence was rudely interrupted by a pitiful whining coming from the far end of the chest, where he noticed a faint purple glow. Crawling through the various broken machine parts, he discovered something amazing. An entire, massive crystal of Petrified Darkness! Then the whining started again.

Moving closer, Kaos discovered a young, perhaps six-month-old dragon in a large nest that appeared to have been carved out of the crystal itself. The skeleton of an older, larger dragon was nearby. Kaos instantly realised what had happened. The mother dragon had died while the baby was still an egg, then, when the baby hatched, it had no food - other than the body of it's mother. He took a closer look at the dragon and noticed something he had never seen before. It's horns, spines, claws and the encasive covering at the end of it's tail seemed to be made entirely out of Petrified Darkness. The rest of it was varied shades of blue, even the wing ribbing and underbelly.

"So, this should be a dragon literally born into evil. I think I've found my way of one-upping my mother and gaining a great new weapon against the Skylanders," As if to prove his point, the dragon suddenly shot out and tried to bite his hand off. "Let's get you out of here. You're going to need a name, though. Hmmmm," Then he spotted something scratched into the floor of the nest as the climbed up the maintenance ladder on the inside of the robot's chest. 'His name is Duskwort. If you find him, take care of him. Please,' Kaos smiled. "Duskwort, eh? It suits you, little dragon,"

And, as he made it out of the innards of the robot, he held the little dragon up to the heavens, as if pronouncing him alive to the whole world. And threw his head back and laughed.

All three evil dragons looked over at Kaos laughing a mere two hundred metres or so away from them, which provided Tails and Cynder the opportunity to escape. The white biplane's engines revved into life, and they took off into the sky. Cogshine looked at Kaos and the two escaping Skylanders. "Shade! Go find out what the heck that lunatic half-brother of ours is doing. Me and Darkus will go after the Skylanders," he ordered.

**So, Cogshine's back with a vengeance and some serious issues. I just want to clear this up, 'A Technical Tail' is set around seven years before 'The Dragon Chronicles'. Thanks for the reviews everyone! And good to see you're all caught up, Seraph. And what's this about the watch? This is very interesting, eh? Peace!**


	18. A Dogfight with Dragons

Ch. 18: A Dogfight with Dragons

"They're gaining on us!" Cynder yelled, starting to panic.

Despite the situation, Tails was grinning through his beak. "Don't worry. Remember that I mentioned that this plane was made of Lego?" Cynder nodded, wide-eyed. "Well, do you know what the best thing about Lego is? You can always build on it!"

And with that, he leapt out of the cockpit and, moving impossibly quickly, rebuilt the biplane in mid-air. Tails detached the top two wings and reattached them to the bottom wings, doubling them in size, then removed it's supports and, disassembling part of the propeller, transformed Cynder's seat near the tail of the plane into an elevated fan-gun turret. Removing the aqua-landing gear and reattaching it to the ends of the wings, he created battering rams at the end of the wings and, by removing the remnants of the propeller and reattached it to the back, transforming it into a low-powered jet engine. All in about thirty seconds.

Cynder looked amazed. "By the Ancients, how did you do that?"

Tails shook his head in disbelief. "I have no idea. It was part of the game, but, to be honest, I really didn't think it would actually work. But now let's go on the offensive,"

And with a cry of 'Full Scream Ahead!" Tails transformed into Sonic Boom, turned the plane around and advanced on the two dragons who had been chasing them. Cynder opened fire with her air cannon. Darkus dove out of the way, but Cogshine charged forwards, paying no heed to the small holes Cynder's turret was tearing in his wings.

Cogshine opened his jaws wide as if to swallow the plane whole, even though it was just as large as him. He extended his claws and - the plane dismantled itself, the pieces turning to darker hues and forming armour that enhanced his battle capabilities. Tails gaped in awe.

"YES! You see my power? I can control technology itself, thanks to my mother! I am undefeatable by the likes of you!" Cogshine crowed triumphantly, before opening his jaws to swallow the two Skylanders whole - only to discover that they had disappeared into thin air.

"I hope I didn't already eat them. I wanted to tear them to shreds and feel their blood in my claws first," he muttered, beginning the search for his prey.

"Can you warn me next time you do that?" Cynder asked, as Tails, human once more, caught her as she soared out of the Portal and narrowly avoided ending up up-side-down in Tails' laboratory wall again. Her weight sent Tails sprawling. "I'm sorry, would you prefer to have been eaten alive by the giant evil dragon?" he asked scathingly. Cynder smiled, despite herself. "Touché," she replied, climbing off him.

"What the heck was that thing?" Tails had to ask.

"Another old friend of Drobot's, do you think?" Cynder suggested. "Just open the portal back to Woodburrow," But Tails was always shaking his head. He looked so weird when he was human, Cynder couldn't help but think. Like a Goldling, but his skin was the colour of sand. Of course, it was still a bit strange when he took the forms of the other Skylanders, but it was preferable to that weird body. He looked like Eon as a teenager.

"The virtuality portal doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. It only takes you to the exact place in Skylands that you portalled out of. But it is possible to send something in there to help us," (Tails)

"How? You saw what he did with the plane," (Cynder)

"He said he could do that to any type of technology. What if we bring in something that's nothing to do with technology?" Tails explained. Cynder smiled again, but this smile would give anyone goosebumps.

"TAILS! DINNER!" A shout suddenly came from downstairs.

"Dinner? It's half past eleven in the morning!" Cynder stated, a questioning look on her face. "In Skylands. Remember what I said about time passage being different between Earth and Skylands?"

"Wait, so it's been four hours in the four minutes we've spent talking?" Cynder gasped. Tails quickly booted up his laptop. "Actually, by the looks of things here, it's been four seconds,"

"HUH?"

"TAILS? IS THERE SOMEONE UP THERE? AND YOUR DINNER'S GETTING COLD!" came the voice from downstairs again.

"IT'S A QUANTUM PHYSICS SEMINAR ON YOUTUBE, MUM! I'M REVISING FOR ADVANCED SCIENCE!" Tails hollered back. Then he shrugged at Cynder. "Well, it's close enough,"

"WELL TURN IT OFF AND COME AND HAVE DINNER!"

"FINE! BUT IF THIS MEANS I MISUNDERSTAND THE POSSIBILITIES OF AN INTER-DIMENSIONAL WORMHOLE BECAUSE OF DINNER, IT'S YOUR FAULT!" Then he burst out in a grin. "Yeah, I don't think I need to worry about that. But if I know my mother, she'll come up here if I don't head down in the next couple of minutes, which we don't want. I'll leave the virtuality pinhole camera," at this he gestured at the laptop, "active so that you don't have to worry about what's happening in Skylands. And dinner should give me a decent opportunity to think of something that we can do to kick that guy's butt. I should only be about twenty minutes," And with that, he turned on his heel and strode off towards the stairs, which Cynder could just see through the doorway to the laboratory, and the doorway to the room beyond the laboratory, which Cynder assumed was Tails' bedroom.

"Kaos Scarmarker Goldengrip, what in Arkus do you think you are doing?" Shadeblazer yelled sternly as she approached. She sounded like a cross mother. Shadeblazer's thoughts had been turning to this more and more lately.

Chronologically, she was only fifteen years old, but due to Linagarnix's growth acceleration procedure, her body was aged to a bit over five hundred. And it was the fifteen-hundred year period between a female dragon's five hundredth birthday and their two thousandth birthday that they started feeling the genetic need to find a mate and give birth to young. Average dragons lived to between four and five thousand, but, like the strange genetic blip that made them reach adult size in a mere thirty to hundred years, they became fertile at the age of five hundred, but became infertile at two thousand. Nobody knew why, it was just an odd aspect of a dragon's genetic programming.

Seven years ago, she had returned to working with her mother. And for the first six years, she had enjoyed it. But, not long after her fourteenth chronological birthday, she realised that she didn't enjoy the evil work so much anymore. It was just feeling a bit hollow, and a bit pointless. She was starting to wonder if it might be time to return her growth to it's natural speed, leave the nest - for good this time - and find a mate, settle down and perhaps even raise a proper family. Unfortunately, there was still something in her that enjoyed the evil - and she knew it wasn't a natural part of her. The evil magic used to speed up her growth had affected her mind too, and she knew it. She had known it ever since the growth-speed enchantment had been placed on her, shortly after her birth - but for more than a decade, she had revelled in it, loved it, loved doing the things it was driving her to do and allowed it to be a large part of her.

Shadeblazer didn't get that any more. She felt hollow, discontent, with the evil, with the killing, with everything that had been her life for the last fifteen years. She knew what she wanted - out. The only question was, how?

What she didn't know was how close the answer was.

Shadeblazer wondered if Cogshine had similar thoughts, then dismissed the idea. Ever since the accident seven years ago, Cogshine had never been the same. He never thought of anything but creative and painful ways to kill people.

"But I'm in the middle of something here!" Kaos shouted. Shadeblazer watched him, a spine-adorned scaly brow raised. "Duskwort! Show her your power!"

The baby dragon yawned and tried to bite off Kaos' thumb again. This time, it succeeded in leaving a row of scratches along the digit.

"YEEEAAAAHHOOW! OWW, OWW, OWW, OH YOU ARE GOING TO BE GREAT IF I CAN GET YOU TO DO THAT TO THE SKYLANDERSOOW!" Kaos yelled in pain. Shadeblazer fell over laughing. Then, remembering her job, she growled at Kaos, showing her sharp, carnivorous teeth.

Duskwort, thinking the growl was directed at him, as Kaos was still holding him, panicked and did something to try and deter the scary monster from attacking him. This is something that most normal babies do. What most normal babies don't do is succeed in that determent. But being born in Petrified Darkness meant Duskwort had powers beyond that of most dragons, even as a little dragonet, and the wave of liquid Petrified Darkness he conjured up swept Shadeblazer straight off the island.

Kaos watched this and gasped. Then an evil smirk came over his face. "If you can get that under control, the Skylanders won't stand a chance," he told the dragonet in his arms. And for the first time, the little dragon smiled malevolently rather than trying to bite off his finger.

Tails staggered back upstairs, clutching his belly. "I really hope I don't get indigestion from all that eating, so quickly," In his hand was an old video game for Wii. Squinting, Cynder could see a very weird-looking hedgehog on the cover that seemed to have lightning cutting him in half. When Tails adjusted his grip on the cover, she made out 'SONIC UNLEASHED'.

"Sonic Unleashed? What's that?" Cynder had to ask.

"It's an old Sonic the Hedgehog game focused around restoring the seven Chaos Emeralds and destroying Dark Gaia and this big buffoon called Eggman. Which I never actually managed to do because I got stuck on the third night stage of Chu-naan. But that's not important. The important thing is, I discovered on YouTube that the second boss is a 'Dark Gaia Phoenix' and, unlike the other seven bosses in the game, this one isn't destroyed when you defeat it, it becomes good," Tails popped the disc out of the cover and into his virtuality game scanner. "It would be a pretty cool game to go into, if I can make this thing do what it's supposed to, but that's unimportant. The important thing is, if I can access the part of the game concerning the phoenix when it's good again, and create an avatar from the good version of the phoenix, save it on the drive, program it to transform me into the good phoenix when I go through the virtuality portal - I need a new name for that thing - and into Skylands. And, as the phoenix, I should be more than capable of defeating that giant evil dragonoid,"

Cynder, who was still trying to work out what he had just said, stared at him in confusion.

"Don't look at me like that. It was this or the giant eel. And I may be uncomfortable as a human, but I do like having at least four limbs. So I'm never using Ghost Roaster or Lightning Rod's avatars,"

Tails started keying in commands to his laptop. A beige phoenix with gold highlights, large, strong, purple wings and thick, muscular legs, and, unlike the Skylands phoenixes, sixteen long, almost feline tails extending from the end of it's body, appeared on-screen. "Now that looks like something that could take on that dragon," Cynder commented approvingly. Tails typed in one final command, and an on-screen Portal of Power appeared beneath the phoenix, and the Gaia Phoenix dropped into the Portal. "Everything seems fine," Tails commented, before stepping into the virtuality portal.

Nothing happened.

"Uh, Tails, you might want to see this," Cynder told the human, indicating the live feed from Skylands on his laptop screen. Tails jumped off the Portal and came to look. The Gaia Phoenix had appeared in Skylands - and time between Skylands and Earth was suddenly equal once more. The two got first-class tickets to Cogshine gasping as the Gaia Phoenix appeared in front of him, the Phoenix looking around, spotting Cogshine as he soared towards it, bloodlust in his eyes, and beating him back with a wave of fire that it created by waving it's wing at him.

"We should get it there and help it," Tails decided as Cogshine launched a volley of missiles from the technical armour he had made from the destroyed plane.

"Which one? That Phoenix looks like it's handling itself just fine," Cynder replied as it spat a burst of fire at the missiles, incinerating them in mid-air. Then the giant bird went on the offensive, setting it's tails alight and flicking multiple small fires at Cogshine. His armour extinguished most, but one got caught in his tail and another in his right wing, and Cogshine frantically beat them out.

Cogshine, getting really angry, kick-started the jets in his armour and launched himself at the Gaia Phoenix, burying his fangs in it's wing. "It's time to go in and help it," Cynder decided. Tails agreed, grabbed Scratch's figure, placed it on the Portal of Power and jumped through, Cynder following him close behind.

The dragon and the sphinx appeared in a flash of light, Tails smiling through his helmet at being a dragonoid once more. As a sphinx, he counted Scratch as a dragonoid.

Blood was leaking from Cogshine's jaws as he bit deep into the soft flesh of the Gaia Phoenix. "Why Scratch?" Cynder had to ask as she summoned as many ghosts as she could to attack the evil dragon. "So that I can do this!" Tails replied, carefully landing on the Gaia Phoenix's wing and using his gem-encrusted gauntlets to cut straight through the roots of two of Cogshine's teeth, then pulling them out of the wing, which bled profusely. "Okay, new strategy. You order your ghosts to tear out his teeth, and I'll switch to Polar Whirlwind and heal the Phoenix,"

Cynder nodded and used her spectral telepathy to communicate this new instruction to her ghosts, which congregated on Cogshine's mouth. Tails transformed again and began healing the Gaia Phoenix.

Ten minutes and fifteen teeth later, Cogshine realised that he wasn't going to get anything but toothache if he stuck around, so he let go of the giant bird's wing and flew off.

The ghosts disappeared, Tails jumped off the Phoenix's wing and took flight, beating his feathered wings like a hummingbird to stay aloft, and the three landed on a nearby Skyland amongst the machinery. "Y'now, that dragon could have just done what he did to my plane with all this old Arkeyan stuff. Why didn't he?"

'I suspect due to the confusion his mental state is in,' an echoing female voice suddenly made itself heard inside both dragon's heads. "Did you hear that?" Cynder had to ask Tails. He nodded wordlessly.

'I am the Gaia Phoenix, guardian of the Chaos Emeralds. Do not waste time explaining, I can see it all in the mind of Tails. I am what you would know as telepathic, for the forces that shaped the game I now know I was created from did not see fit to give me the power of verbal linguistics more sophisticated than primal avian noises,'

"So, wait -" (Tails)

'I am telepathic. Any thoughts directed at me will be heard as clearly as any spoken language. And I will relay our conversation to Cynder if you so wish,' Tails didn't even need to reply in any way, the Gaia Phoenix could see that he wished for her to do so before he could even form a coherent thought on the matter. 'I can also see the question you would ask me. No, there is not a world inside Sonic Unleashed that you plucked me from. Rather, the act of your bringing me here, into Skylands, created me. And I will return you to Woodburrow, but then I must go and find my own destiny in this world,' So thinking, the Gaia Phoenix turned and offered her broad back for the two Skylanders to ride upon. With a couple of wing-beats, they were aboard and the Phoenix bore them back to Woodburrow.

**Well, another chapter of this finished. No flames about the Gaia Phoenix bit, please, I have a way to pull anything out of any video game I like and I'm going to use it. Besides, when you find out what I have planned for the finale, I think you'll forgive me. Numbuh 94, I hope you're out of your funk and ready to upload the new chapter of Darkest Hour.**

**I was actually going to write a new chapter of 'A Technical Tail', but I got serious writer's block. Plus, I had just thought up the Gaia Phoenix bit and I wanted to use it.**

**'Thank you. Apart from my wing being bitten by a glorified reptile cat, I enjoyed it too. I can't wait until I get to meet (CENSORED FOR SPOILERS), and go kick (CENSORED FOR SPOILERS)'s butt in a (CENSORED FOR SPOILERS), as you would put it,'**

**Wha - Get out of my head, you big chicken! And stop giving the readers spoilers!**

**She's going to come back and do this again, isn't she? Why did I have to bring telepaths in? Peace!**


	19. Opposite Polarities

Ch. 19. Opposite Polarities  
The Gaia Phoenix deposited them back at the top of the massive tree at the centre of Woodburrow, before flying away to who knows where. Tails watched it go, a smile playing around his muzzle. Cynder noticed, but didn't comment. She knew that, for Tails, this was one of those rare moments of bliss when the whole world seemed pure, and perfect. If only things could be like that all the time, she thought, sitting on her haunches next to Tails and trying to join in the bliss.

In a far-off distant place that only existed in the mind, Shadeblazer was enjoying a similar moment of pure relaxation. But unlike those of the two Skylanders, nestled in the branches atop the largest tree in the Forest of Clouds, hers was in a cave, with five young dragonets lying asleep beside her. An imaginary mate lay on the far side of the five sleeping dragonets' forms, and in that single, imaginary instant, Shadeblazer knew that that was what she wanted more than anything else in the world.

Then something tickled her in a weak spot at the base of her neck that she thought only she knew about. "Get up, punk!" A harsh, and malevolent voice that sounded awfully familiar to her almost deafened her right ear. "Ugh, I'm awake. I was having a lovely dream - huh?" For as Shadeblazer opened her eyes, she was presented with a mirror image of herself. But the mirror image was talking. And, Shadeblazer realised that she was feeling something that she hadn't felt since she was two years old. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she had no wish to hurt or attack anyone - or even to do something as remotely evil as steal a bar of candy from a Mabu corner shop. Shadeblazer had no idea what had caused it, but for the first time she could remember, she felt good.

"Well, well, mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the evilest one of all?" Her mirror image asked, smiling cruelly. "Huh?"

"Are you going to listen to me, punk, or are you just going to zone out like a hippie?!" her mirror image barked. Shadeblazer decided it was time to look around. And her looking confirmed something she found hard to believe - there were two of her. But there were some differences.

The copy of her, the one that was yelling the sorts of things she would have several years ago, looked almost exactly the same as she had before, jet-black scales, horns, underbelly, wing membrane and spines the colour of blood. The only difference was that her eyes were pure black.  
No pupil, no iris, pure black. Shadeblazer herself, however, looked a fair bit different. Her scales were now a deep crimson, and her wing membrane was a light magenta. In contrast, her underbelly was navy blue, and her horns were as bright and yellow as the sun. Also, the flame at the tip of her tail was gone, leaving a slender limb that tapered to a perfect, conical point.

"Come on, kid! The village over there isn't going to destroy itself!" the other Shadeblazer yelled, and this sparked a memory. Everything that the other Shadeblazer was saying to her was things she had said herself when Insidae aaas refusing to cooperate. Back when Insidae was alive.

It was like everything that was bad, and evil about her, everything that Linagarnix had turned her into, had been separated from her and used to create the other Shadeblazer, leaving her as everything that had ever been good about the original Shadeblazer. "Meaning that this is how I would look at this age if I had lived a normal life, and never had anything to do with Linagarnix, and evil, and the rest of it. It's like I've been cut in half," she whispered, and that sparked another memory. The cruel injury she had inflicted on poor, innocent Potestatem seven years ago. She remembered what that mutilation had turned him into - and it was all her fault.

"I've gotta find him, and apologise to him," Shadblazer muttered, overcome with remorse and guilt. "Hey! You listening, punk!?" The other Shadeblazer yelled at her.

"NO! NOW I HAVE TO GO REPENT A HORRIBLE MISTAKE THAT WE MADE SEVEN YEARS AGO!" And with that, Shadeblazer took off in the direction of the Forest of Clouds, where Cogshine had reported the Skylanders to have crashed.

"I'm not Shadeblazer anymore. I need a new name," she muttered to herself. "Darklight," she decided. Darklight beat her wings and flew towards the forest.

"Seven years ago - that was when I tore Potestatem to shreds! Potestatem joined the Skylanders - and that's where the other me is going - I can't let her reach the Skylanders!" Shadeblazer gasped, taking off after Darklight.

"Hello, my baby, hello, my honey, hello, my right-time ga-hls! Send me a kiss by wiii-re!" Flynn sang enthusiastically as the balloon soared through the skies.

Spyro had torn open one of the seat-cushions in the balloon and stuffed the fluff inside it into his ears. "Make - it - stop! Please!" Night Shift, of course, was as impassive as ever, his bleak, pale blue face as set and featureless as the giant stone Arkeyan monument carved into a mountain they had passed ten minutes ago. "Can you hear me Night Shift?!" the purple dragon cried.

Night Shift did not respond.

"And I thought Gill Grunt's singing was bad!" Spyro exclaimed.

The two Skylanders and the Mabu pilot had been flying through Skylands for the last four hours. Flynn assured them that they were a quarter of the way. His balloon was very, very slow. And, of course, the pilot had been singing any old junk that came into his head for the whole four hours. Spyro was pretty sure he was currently singing some old junk from LEGO Ninjago, whatever that was. Ever since Loni had insisted on bringing her Sky TV tech with her to Skylands, and Drobot had taken it as a personal challenge to make the blasted thing work in Skylands, Flynn had developed a weird fascination with kids' cartoons. Perhaps because he had never really grown up at heart. At least that was most people believed.

"Are you insulting, my singing Spyro, you are completely wro-ong!" Flynn sang to the exact same tune. "You'll see how good I sii-ing!"

"Spyro, my friend, you should see this," Night Shift stated. It was the first time he had spoken the entire flight. Spyro almost tripped over his paws as he rushed to the side of the balloon. "What is it? Drow? Trolls? Cyclopses? Arkeyans? Please say it's all four, and Kaos for good measure! Anything other than that singing!"

"No, maybe, no, no, no, and maybe. Oilspill Island is on fire," (Night Shiff)

Spyro squinted at the island a kilometre or so below them. "Evilised fire, yeah, baby! This should keep us busy for a good couple of hours!"

"Why is that good, my friend?" (Night Shift)

"Because it's a couple of hours that we don't have to spend listening to him!" Spyro jabbed a claw in Flynn's direction, spread his fourteen-foot wingspan and soared down towards the flaming island. "Land this balloon, my friend," Night Shift instructed Flynn. "But there's fire! I don't like fire! And it's purple fire, that's the worst kind!"

"You're using one to power this balloon," Night Shift replied pointedly, gesturing with a disembodied boxing glove at the burner above them keeping the balloon up. "And I don't like it!" Flynn protested.

Night Shift bared his fangs. Flynn yelped, and clumsily grasped for a rope. "I'm landing, I'm landing!"

Spyro absent-mindedly wondered if this was the doing of any of the evilised Skylanders, or if it was the Trolls. He knew that evilised fire was a recent discovery by Kaos, and that, for some reason, he had given it to the Trolls. Spyro had to wonder if he was playing at being a modern-day Prometheus, or what.

Cynder did a lot of reading, and she found Earth mythology particularly fascinating. Spyro had picked up some stuff.

There was no one in sight except a young Water dragon. Spyro wondered what had happened to the Gillmen who normally inhabited the island, then ducked as what appeared to be an evilised Gillman ran towards him. It was unarmed, and as Gillmen had no special powers Spyro couldn't help but wonder what it intended to do to him.

His answer came in the Gillman ineffectively slapping him. Spyro rolled his eyes and used his tail to flick the Gillman into a standing stone wall that, being made of stone, was unaffected by the fire. It effectively de-evilised him. He spotted the Water dragon trying to put out the fire, but failing.

He spotted a grenade on the floor.

"Get back!" Spyro yelled to the Water dragon, who promptly did so, as he chucked the grenade into the fire. It blew up, disintegrating the embers and leaving nothing but a small, charred crater. "Thanks," the Water dragon replied. Spyro took a closer look at her, and was surprised how much she reminded him of Zap. The only differences he could see were that she had shorter, straighter horns that reminded him of Whirlwind and Polarus', and the frills running down her spine were ocean-blue, not green. And that she wasn't wearing anything, while Zap never took off that electric harness of his.

"Just another day in the life of a Skylander," Spyro did a shoulder-less dragon-shrug. "Name's Riley. I came here looking for my long-lost little brother, Aqua. Are you a Skylander?"

"Yeah. I'd shake your paw, but this island is still on fire. Can't say I know anyone named Aqua, but you do remind me of a friend of mine called Zap," Spyro replied. Riley looked interested. "Really? Is he a Skylander too?" Spyro nodded.

"Yep. Don't ask. We're encountering some problems lately, we've all been split up and we're trying to rendezvous at the Cloudbreak Volcano. There's a chance Zap will be there. We should split up. See if you can find some more grenades, and do what I did. Oh, and if you see a blue-skinned vampire boxer with no legs, he's the only other Skylander around. Tell him what to do with the grenades," Riley nodded, and the two dragons split up.

Spyro scooped up a pawful of grenades, and, one by one, used them to extinguish the evilised fire. Spotting a hose, he grabbed it in his muzzle and, dragging it with him, used it to extinguish the regular fires, which had been started when a spark fell into a barrel of oil. Given enough time, they would probably degenerate into the evilised variety, but for now they were still normal and could be extinguished with water. After he had extinguished a large drilling platform that was falling into disrepair, but still mostly intact, he flew up it and saw the fire being extinguished in two places. Only about a quarter of the fires were still burning.

Riley must have found Night Shift, he thought to himself. Spyro jumped down, extended his wings and - narrowly dodged Flynn's balloon, as the idiot Mabu must have thought this to be a good place to land.

"What are you doing, you idiot!?" Spyro yelled at the pilot.

"Landing, that's what!" Flynn replied jovially.

Spyro was sorely tempted to pull the pin from one of the grenades and throw it into the balloon's basket. But then I'd have no ride to get home, or to Cloudbreak, he realised, so the purple dragon threw the grenade at a blaze further down the hill instead.

About an hour later, the two Skylanders and Riley had extinguished all the fires. And restored the occasional Gillman who had been stupid enough to come into contact with the fire and gotten himself evilised. Spyro had explained to Night Shift that Riley thought Zap was her long-lost brother and so she was coming with them. Flynn made his advances, typically. Riley, as a result, incongruously tied his foot to a ballast bag with a long piece of rope, so when Flynn untied the ballast in question, he narrowly avoided making a very wet and oily return to Oilspill Island. Spyro cut the rope and helped Flynn back into the balloon - after Flynn had promised not to sing another word for the rest of the trip.

Five minutes later, Flynn started yodelling.

"I don't suppose you have any masking tape?" Spyro had to ask Riley, more out of hope than expectation. "I wish!" was her reply. Spyro looked at the shredded seat cushions they had stuffed the stuffing of into their ears. "We're gonna need more cushions!" he yelled.

Kaos landed in the copter that he had built himself from the junk in Rampart Ruins, and Duskwort jumped out happily, his tongue hanging out like a dog's. The two were in the Goldengrip Cloudbreak laboratory/fortress, where Kaos wanted to do three things: see if Glumshanks was here, check on the progress with his hair regrowth formula, and do a few tests on Duskwort.

That dragon was living Petrified Darkness. Kaos wanted to find out how - and if the effect could be recreated. Imagine him, Kaos Darkraiser Goldengrip the Fourth, a living being of Petrified Darkness! And the key to that was in the baby dragon beside him, drinking from a pool of that acidic green sludge used as a defence system in the - DRINKING ACIDIC SLUDGE!

Kaos dashed forward, knowing that Duskwort would surely lay down and die - but no. Instead, the dragon flashed green, burped, and suddenly spat a bolt of the green sludge out over the pool. Kaos drew back in shock as Duskwort continued spitting out the sludge in every direction. Some narrowly missed Kaos's robes.

Interesting, Kaos thought. He ate that sludge and gained control over it. I wonder if that will work with everything? No, I'm getting ahead of myself. First I need to break into Mother's portion of the lab and use the technology in there to grow Duskwort to an age that he will be sentient at. Glumshanks and my hair will have to wait. How do I break into Mother's portion of the lab?

Kaos looked at Duskwort, who was smiling like a ninny as he melted holes in everything in sight with his new acidic breath. I have an idea, he added to the earlier train of thought.

**I know, I know, I'm probably going to get a ton of flames for basically stealing Riley from Numbuh 94, but I was so sad about her death in Darkest Hour that I knew I had to bring her into 'The Dragon Chronicles' and make sure she survived this time. Besides, she wasn't Numbuh 94's OC, she's a little known NPC from Skylanders Giants.**

**Wait, did I just give away that she's not going to die in 'The Dragon Chronicles'?**

**Oh, oh, that had better not have been you, Gaia Phoenix!**

**'You're threatening me and yet you're worried about your punctuation in the last sentence? You need to get your priorities straight, Technow,'**

**And, she's flying away again. YOU JUST WAIT UNTIL MY ARKEYAN COPTER ARRIVES IN THE MAIL, YOU SIXTEEN-TAILED - yeah, she's gone. Again. Peace!**


	20. Playing Games

Ch. 20: Playing Games

Darklight, out-of-breath and exhausted, crash-landed in the artificial lake in the centre of Woodburrow. It actually hadn't been that long a flight, but her evil side had been doing everything she could to catch up, and keeping ahead of her even for the mere five-kilometre journey to Woodburrow had been exhausting. Avril and Chill, who had just been coming out of Avril's house in the side of the plaza, saw her first and rushed over. "Oh my, this isn't pretty," Avril exclaimed. There were a couple of deep gouges in Darklight's tail from times her evil side had almost caught her, and she was seriously exhausted. Tails and Cynder flew down from the tree they had been perched in. He was still as Polar Whirlwind, so Tails began firing off rainbows repetitively at the dragon's wound.

Drobot was next to arrive on scene. He took a quick scan and diagnosed the dragon's condition as severe exhaustion, told the other Skylanders it was so, then began trying to rouse her. After about a minute, her eyes opened and saw the cyber dragon. "Potestatem?"

Drobot frowned behind his mask. "How do you possess the information that is my call-sign? What is your call-sign?"

Darklight couldn't help but give a weak smile at this. "Call me Darklight. Shadeblazer's coming. Stronger than ever," And even the effort of forcing out those eight words was too much for her, and her eyes rolled back as she collapsed in the pool, unconscious.

"Shadeblazer?" Drobot muttered as his computers, and his brain, which were much the same thing, processed the word, then it's importance registered. "Skylanders! Battle Stations! Shadeblazer's coming!"

"Wrong, punk. Shadeblazer's here," A mocking, feminine voice rang from the top of the Treasure Tree. The thirteen Skylanders on-site amassed in the plaza, and Drobot couldn't help thinking that Darklight and Shadeblazer's voices sounded awfully similar.

"Oh, I see my good side is just as weak by herself as she was when she was part of me. My bad always was my strongest aspect,"

"Wait. That's all of Shadeblazer's good parts?" Blast Zone asked incredulously, gesturing at the dragon unconscious in the pool.

"Amazing. All of Shadeblazer's good parts have been inexplicably and permanently disconnected from her bad parts, and forced into a separate physical form," Tails realised, his purple eyes widening in amazement. "Well, they say Skylands is a realm of infinite possibilities," Roller Brawl pointed out. Nodding, Tails wordlessly conceded the point.

Before he could make another move, Cynder gripped his furry white foreleg tightly, frowning. "Don't disappear to go get some form of big cannon or something. Us Skylanders can handle this,"

Tails raised his other forepaw in protest. "I wasn't! I only have so many games, and, to be honest I'm kinda out of ideas,"

"HEY! I'm supposed to be killing you while you pathetically try to stop me? No mush!" Shadeblazer figured she had to remind the Skylanders what was happening. She unsheathed her claws and swooped.

Fryno roared and emberformed a massive motorbike. He revved the engine and wheelied it onto it's rear wheel. Causing the front wheel of the motorbike to slam into Shadeblazer's chest, causing her to exhale violently. Fryno, of course, abandoned his bike, which collapsed into a pile of glowing embers, jumped up, clambered onto her back and yelled "NOBODY MESSES WITH US SKYLANDERS, YA GET ME, YA BIG STUPID FLAMING DRAGON? NOBODY!" as he pummeled her with everything he had.

"Go for her wings, Fryno!" Free Ranger cheered.

"NOBODY TELLS ME WHAT PART OF A FLAMING EVIL DRAGON TO ATTACK, YOU GET ME, YOU BIG CHICKEN?!" Fryno yelled, jumping down from Shadeblazer and raging up to Free Ranger, fire in his eyes.

Roller Brawl and Cynder looked at each other, and, in a battle combo that had clearly been predetermined and practiced to the extreme, Roller Brawl skated up the side of the tree, jumped off and did an acrobatic flip and twirled 180 degrees - to be caught by Cynder by her arms, and, both hanging onto each other, Roller Brawl made her skates as large as they would go and, rolling them forwards, cut twin gouge marks right along Shadeblazer's back. Cynder, who had needed to Shadow Dash to keep up with the larger dragon as she swooped around to attack the other Skylanders and Roller Brawl had only managed to hold on because she was Undead too, dropped back and dropped Roller Brawl at the dock. Literally dropped her. The derby champion landed agilely, and the Undead dragon flopped to the ground beside her.

Trigger Happy and Drobot decided that it was time for Tech to strike, or, in any case, Drobot did, and Trigger Happy usually went along with anything someone smarter than him said. Whatever had happened, the two Techies started shooting Shadeblazer with everything they had. And with Trigger Happy's machine gun, they had a lot. Drobot had never actually remembered to decharge the bladegear in his tail that he had charged intended for Shadeblazer the previous day, and as Arkor reminded him of it, he launched the radiant bladegear with meteor-like speed and appearance.

Drobot wasn't proud of it, but the screech of pain Shadeblazer vocalised when it slammed into the base of her neck, right in the pressure point Shadeblazer herself had used on Darklight earlier that afternoon, was one of the best and most enjoyable moments of his life.

Shadeblazer knew when she was beat, but she couldn't leave without one last blaze of defiance. Literally blaze, as she used the flame at the tip of her tail to set the massive tree that made up the centre of Woodburrow alight. The hungry fire speedily began to eat up the dry, combustible timber and greenery.

"Tails, forget what I said about letting the Skylanders handle this. Get something to put out that blaze, NOW!" Cynder instructed.

Rubble Rouser had to object. "Hey, you don't call the shots around here,"

Blast Zone flew up to him. "Neither do you, Rubby boy," the furnace knight told him, poking the rock golem in the chest.

Blast Zone was a furnace knight. Emphasis on knight. Like Stealth Elf, pride ran deeply for him, but unlike Stealth Elf, he took the offence of the pride of others with as much seriousness as he did his own. And Cynder may be a long shot from his favourite person, but he could not stand by and watch this rock-hewn jester disregard the pride of a maiden. Even Cynder.

Tails, realising that firstly, he needed to find a game that he could get a fire truck or something like that out of, and secondly, he did not want to be around when this argument, as things tended to do around Blast Zone, hence his name, burst into flame, took the opportunity to vanish from Skylands.

"I will not allow you to offend the honour of this fair maiden!" Blast Zone exclaimed.

Cynder had mixed feelings about this. She went with her base instinct. Rejection. "Whoa, I am nobody's fair maiden. And you'd better not be pulling another joke on me,"

Tessa interrupted. "Skylanders, Woodburrow is on fire, this is no time for argument!"

Tails was, at that moment, frantically searching his games for something that could put out the fire. Unfortunately, he didn't have any games where the hero hijacked a fire truck for some reason or other.

But what if he didn't use a game?

Kaos smiled evilly as all the robot guards rushed to the west side of Mother's lab, where an 'accidental' jailbreak of the various types of bio-synthesised Chompies had occurred. He had even found a single massive Chompy that was designed to endlessly replicate itself and let it loose, which should buy him all the time he needed.

Duskwort belched out a stream of acid as Kaos tickled his neck, which was a little-known anatomical trigger that all dragons possessed, melting a big hole in the security door leading to Linagarnix's wing of the laboratory. As soon as the hole was large enough for Kaos to run through, he did so, clutching Duskwort to his chest like he was a bar of gold.

Which, to Kaos, he practically was.

He spotted something on a door. It was a map. "Seriously? My mother can afford a map with a picture of her smiling and giving a thumbs up in the corner, but she can't afford a wall to put it on? She does realise this place is staffed by robots, right?" Kaos exclaimed. He was right, the entire lab, Linagarnix's section or no, was basically a series of Skylands inside the fortress. Kaos had no idea why his mother had designed it like that. Duskwort clearly didn't care as he burped contentedly.

Kaos read the map, which told him that the growth development wing was at the northern corner of Linagarnix's labs, which was annoying because he was at the south corner. He'd have to trek all the way through his mother's labs, avoiding the security. Then he remembered something.

A hundred years ago, the Cloudbreak Skylanders had broken into Linagarnix's laboratory using a surprisingly realistic sheep disguise.

The usual custom for the Skylanders at times of the Cloudbreak Volcano's eruption was to select the two best Skylanders in each of the elements to travel to Cloudbreak and form a task force known as the Cloudbreak Skylanders, devoted to the protection of the volcano during the time of it's eruption. The name had been come up with at the first eruption after the Skylanders. Kaos had thought creativity was in short supply at the time when he heard. He still did.

Skylanders aside, his mother had been surprised at how such a crude disguise could possibly fool her sensors. She had refused to admit that her security system could be at fault, so she had kept a good few of the sheep disguises to find out how they did it. And Kaos could see on the map that they were located just across the corridor.

"This is humiliating, but it'll be worth it when I'm Emperor of Skylands! Or at least when I can kick my mother and all four of those dragons of hers out of my castle for good. Why does she even keep that red one in a cage? What's the point of having a minion that you have to keep in a cage?!" Kaos muttered to himself as he crawled along the floor on hands and knees inside a sheep costume. He had tucked Darkus inside his cloak's cowl, which Kaos only actually used when he was projecting a giant magical hologram of his head.

He could see through the sheep's eyes, which were just holes in the head of the sheep, that one of his mother's Eye in the Sky drones was just about to pass over him. Kaos thought 'The moment of truth,' to himself, then amended it to 'The moment of lies, because I'm lying to the scanner about what I am. Plus lies are so much more evil than truth,'

The security drone passed over him harmlessly.

Kaos fist-pumped inside the costume, then continued on his way towards the growth development area.

As he reached the door, Kaos realised that there was a stationary Eye in the Sky right above the door and said a word that, had the Eye in the Skies been audio equipped, would have made them very suspicious of that sheep. There was nothing for it but to throw off the sheep disguise and bring that drone down with Duskwort's acid breath.

But when Kaos squeezed Duskwort's throat, he didn't expel the acid from his system, but the liquified darkness he had used on Shadeblazer in Rampart Ruins. Right into the tractor beam of the drone.

The drone sucked up the liquid darkness into it's internal systems, which instantly shut it down. It crashed to the ground with a loud clang.

Kaos was suddenly very glad that the laboratory was staffed by robots.

Duskwort jumped out of the cowl of his hood and began to eat the remains of the drone. Kaos was about to hold him back, but then he remembered what had happened with the acidic sludge and, figuring that eating the drone might give Duskwort powers over the element of Tech, let the baby dragon eat his fill. It worked. Duskwort, suddenly understanding technology, put his paw on the door. It's systems went haywire and it sprang open.

"Good work, Duskwort. Now let's see about getting you to a size that you can be more intimidating at. Because however powerful you are, the Skylanders won't take you seriously if you're a little dragonet," Duskwort, by way of reply, gave a sage nod that suddenly seemed to convey an intelligence far beyond his lack of years.

Kaos put him down on a control panel, and the lid to a large vat marked 'Dragon Growth Acceleration Vat,' Underneath the sign, in smaller letters, was 'Do not use for non-dragons,'

The required age in years counter clicked to 0023 by itself, the speed dial twisted itself to maximum, which was about an hour, a warning message that the faster the growth speed was, the more likely the chance of deformities or mutations being developed was deleted as soon as it popped up, and when Duskwort was satisfied, he extended his tiny wings, and, despite nobody having taught him to fly yet, flew into the massive vat. Kaos watched in amazement as the baby dragon did it all by himself, without any assistance, instructions or even encouragement from Kaos. It was quickly becoming clear that Duskwort had gained more than complete technical control from eating the drone.

The lid locked itself closed, the vat filled itself to the brim, and Duskwort began growing right before Kaos' eyes. The dark Portal Master found it an amazing sight - for the first two minutes, then he became bored and pulled out a handheld Earth gaming device his mother had gotten him as a child. What was it called, a Gamestation? Playwheel? Funtrack? Something to do with fun and trains, that Kaos was sure of. And yet, while using it was fun, none of the games on it had anything to do with trains. Why was that it's name?

There was a common misconception about Skylands, that the Core of Light was the centred of Skylands. That was wrong. The Cloudbreak Volcano was the centre of Skylands, and, Skylands being the centre of the universe, that meant that the Cloudbreak Volcano was at the centre of the universe.

Riley gasped as she saw the massive volcano in the distance. Flynn and Spyro had the same reaction, Flynn almost dropping a little game he had insisted on stopping at the Lava Lakes Gift Shop for over the side of the balloon. Only Night Shift was impassive, as he dispassionately told them that they were still three hundred kilometres from the actual volcano, and yet it filled half the horizon, the three could only guess at the size of the volcano at the centre of the universe.

They had arrived in Cloudbreak.

Now what?

**'Technow is not here, so he asked me, the Gaia Phoenix, to do the Author's Note. He thought that the chapter title had a low level of likeability, but I think it suits the -'**

**Hey! I told you to stick to the script I gave you!**

**'I must apologise, Technow, it was burnt to a cinder as soon as I touched it with my wing,'**

**I told you to hold it in your claw! And you want a cinder? CYNDER!**

**{telephone rings, Technow picks up}**

**Hello? Cynder, why aren't you here helping me discipline the Gaia Phoenix?**

**{telephone babbles}**

**What? How did you even get to Paris? And how are you being accepted as a dragon there?**

**{telephone babbles panickedly}**

**Fine, I'll tell Loni to open a Portal. And stop giving away spoilers! The readers can't be allowed to know that in the third instalment of Dragon Chronicles, (CENSORED FOR SPOILERS).**

**{hangs up}**

**Great, where'd that blasted sixteen-tailed bird go? Rex, keep reading, you'll get up to speed eventually. Loving your work, Jane. Keep going. xshadowclawx, where the heck are you? Numbuh 94, not really sure what to say. Antex, was that word play in your review, turning the tide with Duskwort the WATER dragon, accidental or not? Seraph, I get the feeling you're not quite up to date, so I'm not giving you a dedication until you are, heh heh. Peace!**


	21. New Enemies

Ch. 21: New Enemies

It had taken them another two hours, but Flynn had finally reached the Cloudbreak Volcano. Spyro and Riley jumped out gratefully, as the balloon was surprisingly spacious but still had them packed like sardines. Add that to the fact that Flynn had been complaining about the fact that Spyro wouldn't let them spend the night - and get a couple of good meals - at Molekin Mountain all day, and both dragons were very happy to get away from both the balloon itself and it's insane pilot.

"Hey Night Shift? Riley? How about we go for a jog around the volcano? There might be other Skylanders around," Spyro suggested. Riley nodded, a smile across her cerulean blue muzzle. Night Shift was as impassive as ever.

"I think I'll stay with the balloon. Y'now, make sure that no one tries to steal it while you're all gone," Flynn suggested.

"Exactly what I was about to suggest," Spyro smiled, then, as the two dragons got out of Flynn's earshot, the purple dragon added "And I think we've all had enough of the scintillating company of the greatest pilot in all of Skylands," At which both dragons fell over laughing.

"Let's split up. Night Shift, go check the lip of the volcano. Riley, check the perimeter of the island. I'll check the base of the mountain. Circle round until you get back to the balloon and tell any Skylanders or beings claiming to know Skylanders to do so as well," Spyro instructed the other two. Night Shift nodded and wafted off to the left, as wordlessly as ever.

Riley, however, was more reluctant to go. "You'd better not stray too far, Spyro. You might need my help again," she joked, elbowing Spyro in the foreleg.

"Me? Need your help? Good luck with that," Spyro smiled. "And stop flirting with me, I have a girlfriend. She may not be here, but I have one,"

Riley, chuckling, spewed a trail of sea slime and slid down it over a couple of rocky outcrops to the edge of the island. Spyro watched her go, thinking that she definitely seemed a lot like Zap. It was conceivable that they were siblings.

Shadeblazer flew through the outer rim of Cloudbreak Islands, chuckling at the way that even now, that horrid, primitive wooden pile of trash was surely going up in flames. She spotted Linagarnix's castle in the distance. The dragon landed in the courtyard and the massive doors opened wide to admit her. She stepped through. Unseen, another being slipped through the doors behind her.

Or so the being thought. Now that Shadeblazer's head was uncluttered with the turmoil that had occupied it for the last few months, her vigilance of her surroundings was exponentially increased.

The Undead dragon's head whipped around like a snake. "Who are you, and why are you sneaking into the castle? No, wait. It'll save time if you explain to me and my mother at the same time," And picking up the being by one of the newly formed barbs on her tail, she continued walking towards the throne room.

Darklight's assumption that Shadeblazer's physical form was unchanged was a tad hasty. As it happened, the changes to Shadeblazer's body simply took more time to take effect than Darklight's changes. The only current changes were the addition of five bone-coloured spikes in the shape of a brazier around the eternal flame at the tip of her tail, and that the claws on each of her toes were slowly growing longer and sharper. It was from one of her brazier-like spikes that the intruder was hanging.

"Shadeblazer, what took you? Darkus and Cogshine returned hours ago. You had better not be late again, or you know what'll happen to Burn," Linagarnix admonished sternly. "Burn? Why should I care what happens to that kid? Oh, and I found this other kid trying to sneak into the castle," Shadeblazer waved the newcomer around on the edge of her tail.

"What?" Linagarnix was genuinely astonished. "But I thought you cared about Burn, and I was keeping him hostage to ensure your compliance. And you look a bit different. Exactly what happened?"

Shadeblazer smirked. It was an ugly sight on her black muzzle. "Best I can figure, based on what I overheard the Skylanders saying, everything bad about Shadeblazer was stripped away from everything good. I'm the bad. The good is unconscious, possibly dead, in that cruddy little treehouse town. And it's probably going up in flames as we speak,"

"So you couldn't care less what I do to Burn?" Linagarnix wanted to confirm. Shadeblazer, despite her recent loyalty issues, was one of her greatest servants, but recently the fact that Burn, who was almost like Shadeblazer's son, was being held captive by Linagarnix was all that was keeping Shadeblazer in line. Somehow, despite everything he had done with Shadeblazer, Insidae and Cogshine, he still had some shreds of morality and cared for others.

"Why would I care?" (Shadeblazer)

Linagarnix smiled. She picked up a small radio and shouted into it "Cogshine! Get the eviliser and hit Burn with all it has. And don't worry about Shadeblazer. Everything even remotely good about her is gone like yesterday's lunch," Just to prove her point, she let loose with a malevolent laugh before cutting off the connection.

Linagarnix turned to the white dragon hanging from Shadeblazer's tail. "Now, who exactly are you?" Shadeblazer shook the young dragon off her tail and she landed as agilely as a cat.

"My name is Windstorm. Air dragon, and daughter of Malefor. Me and my brother Rocky, an Earth dragon who's nowhere near as good at stealth as I am, and so is waiting on a nearby island, want revenge on Spyro, Cynder and the Skylanders for killing our father. We heard that working with you was the best way to gain sufficient power to do so. I heard about what you did with Cogshine. If we can get that kind of power, Spyro is a dead dragon," Windshine vowed, explaining her whole situation to Linagarnix.

"Interesting," Linagarnix considered the story. It doesn't particularly matter whether they're Malefor's children or not, though if they are, it could work well for me, and with their elements of Air and Earth, I'll only be missing Water, Life and that lost time machine created thousands of years ago. If only Portals could still travel through time, she thought wistfully. That would make my plan far, far easier. But still, with these two children of Malefor, I'll be two steps closer to my goal.

"Very well. You can work with us. Shadeblazer, you and Windstorm are to go find Windstorm's brother-"

"Rocky," Windstorm supplied the Dark Portal Master.

"Don't interrupt me. After he's here, I want you both in my private quarters for a better explanation of yourselves,"

Windstorm looked like she was about to protest, but Shadeblazer grabbed her little paw in her own massive one, making the former look as large as a postage stamp, and pulled her along. "Rule number one around here, kid," the black dragoness muttered to Windstorm. "Never upset Mum," Noting Windstorm's questioning look at the term, Shadeblazer elaborated. "Me and Darkus were the first two here. Neither of us ever knew our parents, and Linagarnix basically adopted us and became our surrogate mother. When Cogshine, Insidae and Burn came here, they noticed the two of us calling her Mum and the title kinda stuck, even though it doesn't even apply anymore,"

Shadeblazer noticed this and cursed inwardly. Watch yourself, Shadeblazer, she told herself. You just lost all of your good qualities, don't go and get more!

But that was not possible. You see, there was a Yin and Yang effect on all beings in Skylands. That is, that while people can be more good than bad, or more bad than good, no person can ever be purely good, or purely bad. Shadeblazer and Darklight, once separated, were pure bad and good respectively, but the Yin and Yang effect meant that they were almost immediately generating good and bad qualities, also respectively. The chances were that they would remain more good or bad than most people, but they were not, and never could be, pure.

The massive tree had a crown of flame, which was steadily spreading down the tree. This Tails could see, because whatever time phenomenon was in place, time between Earth and Skylands was currently equal, and even though Chill was holding it back with her walls of ice, it wouldn't last. Tails was still frantically rummaging through his games, searching desperately for anything that would work. The fire truck in Fantasm Forest was rejected, because it was impossible to actually fly the fire truck, his Skylander avatars with power over water were rejected because that water was designed for dealing damage to enemies, not extinguishing fire, but wait, Jet-Vac!

Tails grabbed his S1 Jet-Vac figure from the shelf, which just happened to be fully upgraded and level 15, ducked into his lab, slammed the figure down on the Portal and, embarrassingly, tried to dive into the Portal. Tried. Tails sucked at swimming, sucked at most sports actually, so his dive was more of a vertical leap, causing him to bang his head on the edge of the Portal before collapsing through it in pain. "That's gonna hurt come Skylands," he moaned in the seconds he spent soaring through the strange space he went through every time he switched between Earth and Skylands.

The second he landed in Skylands, now in the form of Jet-Vac, the anthropomorphic wingless eagle, AKA Sky Baron, he kick-started his Jetpack, soared up to the level of the flames and activated his vacuum blaster, clasping one hand to his helmeted head in an instinctive method to try to relieve himself of the headache. It effortlessly sucked up the burning material, basically extinguishing the fire. Tails corkscrewed around the tree, sucking up as many flames and their sustenance as possible. It actually only took a few minutes, after which Tails landed, and was about to switch out of the Sky Baron's form when he noticed that his vacuum blaster was smoking.

Sunburn, who, as a Fire Skylander had been hanging back for fear he would contribute to the flames, took a look. "That thing's gonna blow if you don't expel the fiery stuff stat," he told Tails. Tails nodded, soared back up and released the flames vertically into the sky. The resulting fireball made an amazing firework. Tails switched back to Polar Whirlwind in mid-air, and, flapping his wings like a hummingbird, landed and performed a dragon equivalent of a bow. Which was basically touching his right front foreleg to his chest and bowing his head, though the victorious smirk on his muzzle kind of ruined the image of humbleness.

The other Skylanders were used to this sort of achievement, so they took it with a grain of salt, but the Fabbories were impressed, and duly applauded.

Roller Brawl, Cynder and Sunburn congregated around Tails to congratulate him on his first real heroic deed. "Hey, do you hear that?" Tails asked. As Polar Whirlwind, his sense of hearing was amazingly acute, even more than most dragons. Cynder and Sunburn nodded, but Roller Brawl just looked confused, at least until she realised it was a dragon thing. "Sounds like a balloon's coming,"

Cynder, Tails and Sunburn nodded at each other, and took off, leaving Roller Brawl by the massive pool. She watched them go, considering whether it was coincidental or if there was some kind of dragon telepathy going on. "Eeah, I'll leave that to the geniuses in the Tech element," she muttered to herself, moving towards the palace Tails had created out of thin air that morning to properly prepare her sleeping arrangements. After all, it was getting late.

The three dragons flew towards the balloon, the occupants of which were slowly coming into focus. "Spyro!" Cynder gasped in disbelief, speeding up and tackling her boyfriend full-on. Tails and Sunburn took their time a bit more, finally landing in the balloon without crashing into anyone, though it was getting crowded. Tails decided to see who else was in the balloon. Night Shift and Flynn he recognised, the latter of which he wasn't particularly happy to see, but there were two more dragons he didn't.

However, Sunburn recognised one of them. "Loni! Good to see you, my friend,"

Tails watched the two get reacquainted. "So this is Loni, the Portal Master, I presume?" He was still a bit annoyed at the way both Loni and Scott had completely ignored him when he first arrived in Skylands two days ago. He had been there for two hours before anyone had any idea that Kaos, his mother and Glumshanks were attacking. One of them could have at least come and said hello.

"So you're Tails, then? Sorry I didn't come meet you in person, as I get the feeling you thought I would. If Eon were still around, he probably would have. But I'm not Eon, and me and Scott are trying to make the Skylander forces more casual. Maybe it's not working out as great as we thought it would," Loni did a dragon-shrug at the last sentence.

Tails thought through her explanation. "So you didn't come and meet me because you're trying to make the Skylanders less, er," Tails paused as he searched for the right word. "Militaristic?" Loni suggested. Tails nodded. "The Skylander ranks were like an army boot camp when we got here. And I'm still basically about fourteen. We're trying to change the Skylanders from an army to an on-call task force,"

Tails smiled. "Yeah, I see your point. Who wants to live with that kind of discipline 24-7? Hey, how did you escape the blast?"

Loni did another dragon shrug. "I'm a Portal Master. My Portal abilities kicked in and took me to the Cloudbreak Volcano, which was on my mind because of all the excitement about it's eruption. Me and Scott were planning to take all of the Skylanders and go see it erupt. I spent a couple of days hanging around there, surviving on the sheep nearby, then Spyro, Night Shift, Flynn and Riley showed up looking for any Skylanders or associates who had made their way to the volcano, and found me. You'd be surprised how good raw sheep tastes to a dragon,"

Tails nodded. "Yeah, as a matter of fact, I was,"

**Well, this was interesting. I know, I know, everyone wanted to find out what happened to Kaos and Duskwort, but in the spirit of Kaos keeping Duskwort a secret from everyone, I decided what happens to them should be kept a secret for now.**

**Okay, I couldn't decide what should happen. Next chapter, I promise. But first, 'A Technical Tail' is starting to get lonely, so I'm heading back and doing a new chapter of that. And I told you Rocky and Windstorm would be important later. I actually have all kinds of escapades planned for that spin-off. So I really advise you read it.**

**Thanks for all the reviews, everybody! Two more and I hit fifty! And keep going, Rex, I know you're not a fast reader but I'm confident you'll get there eventually. Thanks for being the only person who's reviewed 'The Abandoned Dragons', Jane! And chill, xshadowclawx, all is forgiven. Peace!**


	22. A Peaceful Day

Ch. 22: A Peaceful Day

It had been a rather enjoyable couple of days of relaxation for the Skylanders and co at Woodburrow. After Spyro, Riley, Loni, Flynn and Night Shift showed up, Avril had finally gotten around to getting some beds constructed, and the Skylanders had spent the night in the Disney Palace, which was relatively comfortable, if a little drafty. Flynn was sleeping in the fold-out bed in his balloon, where he had been shocked to discover that all of the pillows had been shredded! Spyro, Riley and Loni made a point of giving him a wide berth for a couple of hours.

The next day, Tessa and Whiskers, which was the name of her bird, volunteered to take some of the Skylanders sightseeing. Flynn had agreed, because he wouldn't admit it, but he was having a major crush on Tessa. "But I would just like to know what kind of craft we're taking," he had asked the fox-girl. Tessa just smiled and said "You'll see,"

So Flynn was lugging a couple of travel cases, and wearing a new Awesome Volcano Hat, to the docks. Where he looked around, but could see nothing but Tails's ruined pirate ship. "Huh, where's the ship?" the balloonist wondered, before hearing a curious noise behind him. "That's funny, it's probably just me but I could have sworn I heard a GIANT CHICKEN!" Flynn gasped as he turned back towards the hub of Woodburrow. Tessa's smiling face poked out from behind the bird's head. "Nice to see you made it, Flynn. This is Whiskers, my closest friend. I raised him from an egg. Isn't he cute, oh yes you are, oh yes you are!"

"Get a room, why don't you?" Spyro had to ask as he and Cynder, who had refused to leave his side ever since their reunion the previous day, strolled up. "Sorry, Spyro, but there's only really room for two on Whiskers," Tessa apologised.

"Then it's a good thing that me, Riley and Drobot are well on the way to repairing the Caribbean," Tails put in, as he climbed out of the ruined ship, in Camo's form for the third time. Tails rather enjoyed using the plant dragon's form, least of all because he rather enjoyed chocolate, and as Camo he had an infinite supply through cacao beans, which were used to make chocolate. Drobot had refused, but Riley loved the free candy, least because cacao was indigenous to Earth, not Skylands, and she had never tried chocolate before.

"Chocolate?" Tails offered the other five beings one of the bars he and Drobot had combined their abilities to create. The brown starkly contrasted with the poppy-red leaf-like scales that encased his forepaw.

The Caribbean was the name Tails had given the pirate ship, in honour of the video game it had come out of. He had considered 'The Sparrow', but in Tails' opinion, that made it sound like a skimpy little dingy.

Spyro, Cynder and Tessa declined, on the grounds that it looked somewhat like animal faeces, but Flynn didn't know what faeces was, so he eagerly stepped forward to try it - and nobody noticed that in stepping forward, he was stepping away from the giant chicken. He took a cautious bite - and absolutely loved it, scoffing the whole thing in a matter of seconds. "Tell me you have more, that stuff is delicious!" Flynn gasped, grabbing Tails's thorn-like yellow horns.

Tails shook himself free of Flynn's grasp and instinctively grew a protective wall of melons around himself. "Not for you, you've got all the makings of a chocolate addict. And I wouldn't try to break through the melons, I'm not sure how much Camo's ones hurt but mine probably hurt more. I got them seriously well upgraded,"

At which point, Drobot and Riley emerged from the ship, both rather blackened. "There's nothing anyone could do, not even Drobot," Riley said apologetically.

"Affirmative. The operation pertaining to the restoration of the object classified as 'The Caribbean' has been classified as impossible until further repair materials can be appropriated and installed,' Drobot confirmed.

"I hope we find my Dread-Yacht soon. My balloon will not carry all of us," Flynn interjected, using rather drastic hand motions to get his point across. One of them accidentally clipped one of Tails's melons.

Everyone ducked for cover - except Flynn. When they opened their eyes, Flynn was absolutely coated from the front in watermelon juice, as was the floor around him. "I'm never eating watermelon again," Flynn swore. "Can somebody help me get this stuff off, please?" the pilot requested.

Tails smiled impishly, and disappeared. He reappeared seconds later, as Zap, and drenched Flynn from head to toe with a massive wave. "I'm starting to think transforming into Camo is causing him to rub off on me," he commented to Riley.

"Hey, what's that?" Spyro asked, gesturing to a black tablet in Tails' paw as Flynn shook himself like a wet dog in a desperate attempt to dry off. "My IPad," Tails replied, activating the electronic tablet. The other Skylanders crowded around as Tails showed them the technology. "Touch-the-screen tech? That's hundreds of years ahead of anything Skylands has ever seen!" Riley exclaimed.

"And, wait, are you in Zap's form now?" Riley had been brought up to speed on the entire business of Tails' transformations. The male water dragon nodded. "Yep, Zap is definitely my long-lost brother. But can you use a different one? It's kind of disconcerting,"

Tails nodded again, and disappeared. He immediately reappeared as Polar Whirlwind again, and booted up one of his favourite apps, NinJump. "There are thousands of different games you can download, and this is one of them. It's called NinJump,"

Stealth Elf, who had been approaching, pricked up her ears. "You basically have to get as far as you can. And, if you do the right things, you can get awesome abilities, like growing the wings of a bird and taking flight, generating a massive turn of speed," Tails demonstrated, and the Skylanders watched as the little on-screen ninja flew up the screen with the colourful wings of a parrot.

Stealth Elf dashed over. "You mean that it is possible for a ninja with sufficient skill and knowledge to temporarily grow the wings of a bird, granting them the power of flight and giving them amazing speed? Why have I not heard of this technique? I must have missed a section in my Master's scrolls. Tessa! Where is the nearest library of great volumes?" Stealth Elf rattled off in amazement.

"There's a pretty good one in Fantasm Forest," Tessa replied, at which Stealth Elf shoved Flynn off the back of Whiskers and instructed the Fabbory "Take me there at once! I must learn the secret of the winged ninja!" Tessa frowned, but dutifully took her place in Whiskers' saddle and the three took off.

Tails watched them go and frowned. "Shouldn't we have told her that it was part of a fantasy video game?" he questioned of Spyro.

The purple dragon shrugged. "I wouldn't bother going after her. Times like this, Stealth Elf can be like Hot Dog with that fire bone of his he loves so much. To be honest, she's so determined that I wouldn't be surprised if she actually does discover a way to grow wings or whatever it is you said. And if she doesn't, your best move would probably be to wait until she gets back and tell her then," Spyro explained. Tails nodded, understanding.

"Really? Hot Dog got a fire bone ability as his Wow Pow. I wonder if it's connected," Tails commented.

"Hey, Tails, can I talk to you? Alone?" Spyro requested. Tails nodded, and they went over to a small Skyland that was connected to Woodburrow by eight slabs of rock positioned like stairs. Each bore an Elemental Symbol, but for some reason Tails couldn't fathom instead of there being an Earth symbol, there was a second Tech symbol on the last stair.

"Do you know of the Dragon Temple from the times of my adventures in the Dragon Realms, almost ten years ago?" Spyro asked Tails.

"Well, I never actually played the original Spyro games, but I do remember some stuff from the blogosphere. Ancient home of the four elemental guardian dragons of Fire, Water, Earth and Lightning whose names I can't remember and training ground and daycare center of young dragons?"

"Yep," (Spyro)

"Invaded by Cynder when she was evil in order to try and kill you?" (Tails)

"Kind of," (Spyro)

"Transformed into a fortress of evil by Malefor and dropped into a volcano when you beat - oh, now I see where this is going. You want me to use the virtuality portal to recreate it," (Tails)

"Actually it was disintegrated in a torrent of fire when the Destroyer reached it, but close enough. And yes, is it possible?" Spyro pleaded.

Tails considered the things that would be necessary, every problem and how to surmount it. "Well, the biggest problem would be the fact that I don't actually have any of the old Spyro games, however we should only need one. But it has to be the right one. The Dawn of the Dragon game is out, it's only a fortress of evil in that game, so our best bet would be the time when Cynder and the Apes invade, now which game is that?"

Tails activated his IPad, which amazingly still had a Wifi connection, and connected to the Spyro Wikia. "Wait, I have a Wikia? What's a Wikia?" Spyro asked.

"It's like an online dictionary of you and anything even remotely connected to you," Tails explained. "Here we are. The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning. I just have to get the game, hook the game into my system and -"

"Is that how I look in those games? Sheesh, what were those guys thinking?" Spyro interrupted Tails, looking at the picture of him doing what appeared to be the type of martial arts manoeuvre Stealth Elf did on a daily basis. "I have no idea, it looks really stupid, doesn't it?" Tails replied, nodding his white-furred head.

"Then there's the problem of transportation. The virtuality portal only takes stuff to Skylands. We'd need a Portal open to the Dragon Realms in the exact place where the Temple would appear, leading to the exact position in the Dragon Realms where it needs to be placed," the unicorn-dragon hybrid added.

"So what I'm hearing is, it's tough, but it can be done," Spyro surmised.

"Got it it one," Tails finished.

The two dragons returned to the others. Tessa got back, without Stealth Elf, and she reported that the Life Skylander had insisted that she be left at the library and picked up later in the day. Flynn climbed on somewhat nervously, and the two took off in the general direction of the East section of Cloudbreak.

And so the day passed uneventfully. Spyro gave Tails some advice on flight, Drobot went to Rampart Ruins to see if there was anything salvageable, Chill spent some quiet time fishing, Roller Brawl went into the forest for some skating practice, and in general everyone had a rather nice and relaxed day.

And so the day proceeded in much the same fashion. For the Skylanders, at least.

Kaos had been lucky enough to not be disturbed, for growth acceleration wasn't quite as . . . accelerated as he had hoped. It took twenty-four hours for the technology to grow Duskwort from an infant to a dragon in his mid-teens. From a scientific outlook, that was an amazing acceleration.

Kaos just thought it still took way too long.

It was a bit of a biased view, as Kaos hadn't anticipated having to spend the night there and so spent a rather cold night on the metal floor, with nothing but his usual robes and a couple of labcoats he had found in the lab for warmth. He repetitively consoled himself that it would be worth all of the discomfort when he was emperor of Skylands, which actually didn't do that much to console him.

Of course, it never occurred to him to leave Duskwort in the growth chamber and go check on his hair regrowth formula, or to see if Glumshanks was around or not, or even to go to the living quarters and get something to eat, and a bed for the night.

But finally, after a long night and a longer day, the growth unit pinged like a microwave and popped open. Kaos rushed over eagerly.

And found a now-teenage Duskwort snoozing beneath the surface of the growth formula. The occasional snore drifted up to Kaos on the surface.

"Hey! Duskwort! Wake up!" Kaos yelled at the dragon. He obstinately continued to snore. "I've got a universe to conquer, and I need you to do it, now wake up!" There was no obvious reaction, though Kaos could swear he saw the blue-scaled dragon smile. Kaos figured the dragon would have to come up for air eventually, so he sat back and waited.

What Kaos forgot was that, seeing as Duskwort was a Water dragon, he could breathe underwater, and in any case, the growth serum was heavily oxidised, meaning it didn't take a Water being to breathe under the serum.

After about five minutes of waiting, Kaos got bored and went to get a big stick he had spotted earlier.

He poked Duskwort with the stick from outside the serum.

It didn't take a genius to work out that poking a being that was basically living Darkness was a really bad idea. But apparently, it took more brain cells than Kaos possessed.

Duskwort reared up out of the containment unit, somehow elongating his torso and arms to look even more menacing and to tower over Kaos. "Never. Wake. Me. Up. Again!" Duskwort carefully punctuated each word, so that it's full implications were clear. Then he shrunk back to normal size, and somehow controlled the growth serum to spit him out, where he landed as gracefully as a cat in front of Kaos. He looked a bit different.

His scales were now a deep, ocean blue, and his wings had changed to a deep shade of obsidian, but the Petrified Darkness now made up not only his horns, spines and claws, but his underbelly consisted of the crystals as well. Duskwort appeared to have shed the protective coating on his tail - Kaos could see it drifting abandonedly in the corner of the tank - and, strangest of all, his wings had grown to amazing proportions - and then split in two, so that Duskwort now had four wings. It was unsettling.

"Greetings, Duskwort. I am Kaos! - And -"

Duskwort cut him off. "Yes, yes, yes. I know who you are, Kaos. I also know that you want to use my powers over Darkness to take over Skylands, and then, the universe. I can read minds, and I heard you while you were carrying me around yesterday. I also know that this place is guarded with robots the likes of which even I cannot defeat single-handedly. Where are the Chompy bio-engineering pods?"

Kaos was dumbstruck. Duskwort was even more powerful, cunning, conniving and above all evil than he was. "They're at the other end of the labs. We're going to need a different plan,"

Duskwort nodded his crystal-adorned head, filing away the information. "Are there any other, closer places that we can reach that contain a large mass of life-forms?" Kaos unfolded the tourist guide to the Goldengrip Laboratories In The Cloudbreak Hemisphere (or GLITCH for short) and Duskwort craned his neck to look at it. "Is that a tourist map? For a secret laboratory?"

Kaos frowned. "Yep. My mother has a weird sense of humor. I usually get my laughs from a good spot of torture for no reason,"

At this point, it was fairly late at night, and while Kaos and Duskwort were plotting their escape, everyone else was actually preparing for bed. Except Stealth Elf, who had insisted on staying at the library to research, no matter how much sleep it cost her.

Flynn staggered off Whiskers, who Tessa then took off again on to take him to his nest high in the Treasure Tree. "Hey, Skylands! I have a girlfriend! Boom!" Flynn shouted out, an idiot's grin on his face. He started making his way across the plaza to the Disney Palace, passing Darklight, who he realised was just starting to wake up.

Wait. Darklight was waking up!

"Skylanders! Anyone! The weird dragon lady is waking up!" Flynn shouted, panicking. Then he realised what the new Flynn, the brave Flynn, the Flynn that Tessa respected and had declared earlier that day that she wanted to date, would do.

"Now you listen here, dragon, I am Flynn, greatest pilot in all of Skylands, hero of Boomtown, and you will not hurt so much as one single leaf, from one single branch, of one single tree, in this one single town, while blood and awesomeness runs through my veins - and by the power of my awesome volcano hat of awesomeness, and the awesomeness of the great aviator's goggles of my awesome self, I command you to halt!" Flynn challenged, wading into the pool towards Darklight's head, brandishing his volcano hat like a shield and holding his aviator's goggles as if they were nunchuks.

Drobot and Riley, who had also just come from the docks, were the closest people around and had heard every word of Flynn's courageous self-promoting speech, burst out laughing. Tessa watched from above and sighed. "Flynn, you are so awesome," she muttered.

**Okay, so I wanted to include Darklight's interrogation in this chapter, but I got a bit of writer's block. And I know, everyone's wondering why I didn't mention exactly what happened between Flynn and Tessa on that date, but I couldn't find a way to work it in. Never fear, I'm going to write a one-shot about it entitled 'Love at First Boom' - eventually. So sorry to break your victory streak at having finished this, Rex.**

**Weird. This is my longest chapter yet, and my first one with more that three thousand words, and yet it feels so short. Go figure. Scratch that, now that I've changed the colouring of the Gaia Phoenix, 'A Dogfight with Dragons' is 3014. But this one's more than 3200!**

**Oh, and I almost forgot, I did a bit more research, and it turns out that I got the Gaia Phoenix's colouring wrong, so be sure to check back there.**

**Yes! I got through an Author's Note without that flaming bird interrupting me! Peace!**


	23. An Intelligent Conversation

Ch. 23: An Intelligent Conversation

"So, what exactly happened?" Spyro asked Darklight. Darklight had climbed out of the pool, and everyone had met on top of the Central Tree because, other than the fountain, it was the only place in Woodburrow big enough for an adult dragon.

Shortly after Darklight had woken up, Sharpfin had shown up with the wreckage of the Dread-Yacht. His people were working on restoring it, as he had promised, but Sharpfin himself was at the top of the tree and, now that someone had explained what was going on to him, as eager to hear Darkligh's explanation as anyone else.

Riley was the only one not present, she had heard about her brother's appearance and had gone to find him.

"Kaos was standing on top of an Arkeyan Robot, holding a baby dragon. When I asked him what he was doing, he said something about pronouncing the baby dragon - I think his name was something along the lines of Wart, like the ugly pimple - then this massive flood of what looked like liquid pink crystal appeared out of nowhere, swept me off the island, and as soon I came into contact with it, it knocked me out. When I woke up, I'd been separated into me and Shadeblazer," The large red dragon replied.

"So you were split into your bad and good parts?" Bash, who was having trouble wrapping his head around the whole thing, asked. "I don't think it's that simple. Yin and Yang theory," Tails, who for reasons unknown had returned to Camo's form once more, replied.

"And that is?" Bash followed up.

"To put it simply, that there can be no good without bad, and no bad without good,"

"Precisely. My servers indicate that it is a far more reasonable hypothesis that the being classified 'Shadeblazer' was technomagically separated into her original segments conceived within the mobile three-dimensional geospatial regions of her genetic mother's womb and the incubation area commonly known as an egg, and the more distinguishable segments that were brought into existence when the organism currently only designated as 'Kaos' Mother', information of given name currently unidentified, activated her powers of evil magic to replicate multiple times the raw, undeveloped bad segments of undeveloped Shadeblazer, and concentrate them into an alternate personality that swamped the original form of Shadeblazer, now in the form of Darklight. It is evident that this personality has emerged only recently, but was merged with the artificial personality so intricately that the original and aboriginal personality believes them both to be the same personality," Drobot explained, as if it was the simplest matter in the world.

"Okay. I think I speak for everyone when I say that I have no idea what you just said," Flynn stated, throwing his arms wide to encompass everyone on the treetop.

Tails jumped in to explain. "Basically, because of Mom, Shadeblazer suffered from multiple personality syndrome, but her two personalities were so close they both always thought they were one and the same. But now they've been separated. It's just coincidence that Darklight turned out to be all the good, and Shadeblazer all the bad. But due to Yin and Yang theory, Darklight's developing a bad side even now, no matter how small, and Shadeblazer's probably finding some good qualities within herself as we speak,"

Most of the spectators understood this, but Flynn just looked confused. "Uh, what are personalities? And what does the weird villain without a catchphrase, y'now, from The Incredibles, have to do with this?"

Tails clasped a paw to the base of his central horn, and shook his head. Loni spotted his predicament, and jumped in to help. "Tessa, can you explain that to your new boyfriend?" the Portal Master requested. "And Flynn?" Flynn, who had been turning to Tessa, looked back at the cerulean-blue-scaled dragon. "Syndrome has nothing to do with this,"

Tails gasped. "Syndrome! I could - no, no, no, that's not going to work," Roller Brawl, who was the closest person to him, asked "What ain't going to work, mate?"

"I thought that maybe I could use the Disney Infinity figure avatars to get into Skylands without having to impersonate a Skylander. But that'd take months of work, and it already took me a year and a half to make the virtuality portal work in the first place. Besides, they're all humans, other than the Cars and Monsters University avatars, and I kinda like having more than one eye and proper limbs," Tails explained to the female vampire.

Roller Brawl shook her head. "I'm still stuck on why you need avatars,"

A smile came over Tails' leafy green muzzle. "Me too, Brawl, me too,"

Finally, Flynn and Tessa were gone and Darklight's interrogation could continue. "So, what's Kaos and his mother planning?"

"I'm not quite sure. Linagarnix - Kaos' mother - has some kind of secret plan for some kind of ancient ritual or something, but she never told me what it does, only that she needs a dragon or dragon hybrid from every element and the Silhouette's time machine to complete it. And I know that she already has at least four of the eight dragons she needs. Cogshine, for Tech, Darkus, for Magic, Burn, for Fire, and, well, the other me for Undead,"

"Wait, what's the Silhouette's time machine?" Tails interrupted her.

Shockingly, it was Trigger Happy who answered. And everyone had thought the only reason Trigger Happy had even come up there was to use the passing birds for target practice. "The Silhouette? The Silhouette was the most awesome and weird Tech Skylander in history!"

"Affirmative. Activating vocal data file now," Drobot boomed.

A soft, synthesised female voice filled the air. "The Silhouette is the role model and hero of all Tech Skylanders since his passing, a thousand years ago. At the time, half of Skylands was thought to owe it's existence to him. But even now, nobody knows a thing about him. He appeared out of nowhere wearing a custom-built battle suit that didn't reveal a single one of his physical features, declared that he wished to join the Skylanders, and after single-handedly defeating an Arkeyan Robot that had been activated and was on a rampage even though all of his team-mates had sustained terminal injuries that two never fully recovered from, and thus had to retire from Skylander duty. After this accomplishment, he was offered the leadership of the Skylanders, which he accepted and for the next thirty years, he was one of the best leaders and Skylanders in the ten thousand year history of the Skylanders. End file,"

"You see, Tails, Portals of Power are thought to have lost the ability to travel through time around the time that the Arkeyans came to power. This could be due to the fact that they exterminated the Golden Dragons, which were thought to be the most powerful beings in recorded history. But when the Silhouette came along, rumour had it that he created a new Portal of Power, one that had the ability to travel through time once more. It's existence was never proved, but it's thought so likely that it's generally accepted as fact. It's also thought that the Silhouette hid it somewhere in Skylands, and left a lost trail for a truly worthy being to find it. Problem is, people say that he left the first clue on the Isle of Light, but nobody has ever found squat. Or something like that," Cynder explained further.

"Got it. If only they taught Skylands history at my school, something tells me the students would be more interested in it than the various natural disasters that befell Australia in the last thirty years," Tails chuckled.

"So, is there anything else you think you should tell us?" Spyro asked the large, crimson dragon. "Well, there is one thing. You already know that Linagarnix has growth acceleration technology, don't you?" Darklight asked.

"Affirmative. It was the logical conclusion considering your growth over a mere seven time-periods designated as years," Drobot put in.

"But do you know that she can also use that technology to change a being's DNA? It's what she did to Darkus, she infused his DNA with Spyro's and other purple dragons. And I haven't got proof, but I think she did it to Cogshine too, with primal vampire DNA,"

Roller Brawl pre-empted Tails' next question and explained about the two types of vampire in Skylands.

"That's all I know that can help you. Unless you think that Kaos' taste in diaries could help you," Darklight smiled.

"Help? No. Entertain? Yes," Blast Zone smiled. "Please, go on," And the furnace knight extended a gauntleted hand in a mock 'ladies first' gesture.

Of course, Kaos himself was not having much fun. He had identified one of the sheepshooter turrets as close enough and as having enough life forms for Duskwort's taste, and they were now making their way back there inside the sheep poncho. And Duskwort was complaining at the top of his lungs every step of the way. "Why are we even doing this? Just because we can use one of my powers to create an army, doesn't mean we have to,"

Kaos frowned in an obviously annoyed manner. "If I remember correctly, this was your idea,"

"I'm a teenager. I'm fickle," Duskwort offered by way of reply.

Inwardly, Duskwort was having the time of his life. For the whole 'obnoxious teenager' thing was a massive act, intended to get Kaos angry enough for Duskwort to trick him into doing something rash. Rash like accidentally turn himself into a powerful minion for Duskwort.

The Darkness dragon had it all figured out.

The two arrived at the sheepshooter turret, and as they shrugged off the poncho, Kaos asked his companion "Okay, we're at the sheepshooter turret, now what?"

Duskwort rolled his eyes and sighed. "Do I have to do everything around here? Watch and learn," then he started launching globs of the growth serum that he had spent the last twenty-four hours in at the sheep. Which began undergoing an amazing transformation. Their hooves sprouted into three-clawed paws, they shod their fur and their black skin transformed into scales of a reptilian appearance. The sheep's tiny, fluffy tails elongated to a two-foot length and spines grew out of their newly scaled backs right down their tails. Their wide, balled eyes turned red and became slitted, and their short, rounded horns stretched in a linear fashion until they were twenty centimetres long, and as straight as a needle. Finally, their backs stretched and contorted until sets of twelve-foot long dragonoid wings burst out of them.

The result was fifty replicas of Duskwort. As one, they all abandoned what they were doing, turned to the original, distinguished by his varieties of blue and purple, while the copies were a uniform black, the only spot of colour being their slitted, red eyes. "Yes, master. How can we serve you, master?" All fifty ex-sheep said as one.

Kaos started laughing manically. "If only I could do that myself! I'd have no need for you, and conquering Skylands would be a cinch! Ha ha, ha ha, heh, er, why are you looking at me like that?" Duskwort was glaring at him as if there was something glaringly obvious going on that he couldn't believe Kaos hadn't noticed.

"Why don't you?" the navy-blue dragon asked.

Kaos frowned. "Why don't I what?"

"Why don't you get yourself that power? All you have to do is jump into the vat of growth serum that I spent the last day in. It should still be coded with my DNA, so if you take a chunk of Petrified Darkness and go in with it, it should, as long as what I received from the computers is correct, transform you into an even more powerful version of me. Then I can go live my life in peace, how I want to, you become powerful enough to rule Skylands, like you want to, we both get what we want," Duskwort explained, in the manner of one explaining to a young child that one plus one equals two.

"Perfect. Now we just need a piece of Petrified Darkness. You just tell those things to go find us some Petrified Darkness, then meet us in the growth acceleration department," Duskwort frowned, muttered something about 'lousy idiot, who does he think he is?' under his breath, but obeyed the tyrant's instructions. "Duskers. Thirty of you, go and find the nearest Petrified Darkness and bring it to me, the rest of you, guard us on our way to our destination," Duskwort commanded. It could have sounded impressive, but instead Duskwort chose to say it in the tone of a teenager being forced to do homework when they would rather play video games.

Nevertheless, the minions saluted with their right wings, which by all known laws of dragon anatomy was supposed to be impossible, and went to carry out Duskwort's instructions.

At a further instruction from Kaos, and thus a further instruction from Duskwort, four of the Duskers extended their left/right wings to the back of a fifth, which extended both of it's wings, and somehow their wings combined on a molecular level to form a canopy that Kaos rode upon. Duskwort decided to remain on foot, in keeping with his character. The other fifteen Duskers circled them, always on the lookout for potential threats.

Once again, Kaos started laughing manically as the Duskers destroyed, then ate every robot they came across, and as the occasional Chompy appeared, one or other of the Duskers spat the serum at it, and their numbers would grow by one.

Linagarnix suddenly froze shock-still. "Wilikin! Tell Rocky and Windstorm to get in here!" The two dragons appeared in the doorway a couple of minutes later. "I have my first mission for you two. My maternal instincts tell me Kaos is up to something in my laboratory. Well, that and the fact that I just received an alarm coming from there. Anyway, I want you two to get over there, find out what's going on, and put a stop to it! Questions?"

Rocky raised a paw. "Can I get that growth acceleration thing that you did for Shadeblazer and Cogshine?"

"The growth acceleration technology is in the lab that I am receiving a distress call from. So yes, you can obtain artificial growth and enhancement after you resecure the necessary technology. Now, anything else?" Both dragons shook their heads wordlessly. "Then go!"

**So Rocky and Windstorm are going to find and capture Kaos and Duskwort, while Kaos and Duskwort are both plotting to use each other to take over Skylands, and why are you nosing around my pockets, Gaiphe?**

**'To see if you have any chocolate, and do not call me Gaiphe. My name is Gaia Phoenix,'**

**That's too much of a mouthful, thanks. Gaiphe it is!**

**'Do not make me make you regret giving me control over fire, child,'**

**And do not make ME ask Tails to pull the Chaos Emeralds out of your game and use them to kick your butt. Because Sonic already did that for the second boss battle and he didn't even need the Chaos Emeralds.**

**'Maybe so, but he did need a fragment of Dark Gaia's power, and that is something that you do not have,'**

**Yeah, well, I'm in the middle of an Author's Note. Why do you only interrupt me then?**

**'Because it's fun. And I do interrupt you at times other than when you're doing an Author's Note,'**

**Yeah. I still have the bruise from when you 'interrupted' me as I was biking through a crowd of my fangirls.**

**'That bruise disappeared long ag- oh, wait, you are correct, it is still there,'**

**Can we finish this later? Peace!**


End file.
